


moi et vous

by NorthernRose



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ballet AU, Don't be mad at me for making a certain blonde haired god a plot device, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, In the real world Sansa would obviously be a ballerina and I know you all understand this, It will likely get explicit because reasons, Jon Snow and Sansa Stark Are Not Related, Jon Snow and the Starks Are Not Related, M/M, Modern Westeros, Multi, Mutual Pining, My own love of ballet made me write this nonsense, Single Parent Jon Snow, Slow Burn, Theon is the best friend we need, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Ygritte is complicated, a fella did Sansa wrong...enter Jon Snow, as in Jon is an actual daddy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:28:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 36,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22467886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthernRose/pseuds/NorthernRose
Summary: Jon Snow and his six-year-old daughter relocate to Wintertown. New job. New home. New life.Robb and his clan of Starks welcome Jon and Lya into their fold like old friends.Enter stage right - Sansa Stark, once prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet in Kings Landing, who has tried to spend the last year repairing a spurned heart and broken dreams by opening her own Ballet School in the North.
Relationships: (in the past baby), Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Ygritte (past)
Comments: 312
Kudos: 502





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Good morrow to you all, my dear hearts.  
> This idea has been rattling around in my brain for a while, and is wholeheartedly inspired by some of the wonderful fics I have encountered in which Jon has his own children. *ovaries explode*
> 
> It is also absolutely inspired by my own love and experiences with ballet. *what do you mean I'm too tall for pas de deux?* - and you will likely here more of this as we go along. 
> 
> It's light-hearted and jovial in parts, please do not take me too seriously, no one else does. 
> 
> Merci beaucoup!

The last six weeks have been hard for Jon, perhaps some of the hardest in Jon’s life, not in the devastating, life destroying kind of way… He knows deep down that moving his entire life from Hardhome to Wintertown is a good thing, utterly positive and the right decision, but change is hard all the same. After spending the last seven years in Hardhome, a new job, a new home, old friends who seem new again… it’s been a lot, and if it’s been a lot for him, it’s certainly been even more so for Lya.

Lya is six now, and utterly perfect in Jon’s eyes. His daughter has been perfect from the moment she screamed bloody murder as she came into this world. She had been born in the worst blizzard in ten years and has been a constant storm of love and chaos ever since. He wouldn’t change her for the world, his vivacious warrior, with eyes as grey as his, and hair like ink laced with strands of auburn when the sun shines just right. She’s his heart, and although he knows this has been tough on them, moving here has been for _her_. Everything he does is for _her_.

Being a slave to Lya’s every hope and dream is a penance he will happily pay till his dying day, and his little girl is not one for frivolities and the nicer things in life, she gets that from her mother, so he wants to make sure she has every opportunity in life she could desire, something he never had, and something Lya’s mother honestly doesn’t really give a damn about.

Ygritte never had what most would call a traditional outlook on life. She valued traits, not things. She thinks freedom and bravery are more important that stability and routine. Where others can be frivolous with things and possessions and relationships, Ygritte saw those things as throwaways, bygones, dreams that would never be, and that’s ok, that’s Ygritte, but it isn’t Jon, it hasn’t been Jon for a long time.

They had met at University. He studied architecture on a full scholarship. He can still remember the day he received his offer from White Harbour, he can still remember the tears his mum had cried, like she’d never been prouder. Ygritte had gone to the local college, studying Alternative Therapy part time. She partied the other half of her time. She was wild, brave and passionate. She made fun at him for his career choice, called him _white-collar_ instead of his actual name for a good six months. She made him laugh at himself. It was that kind of relationship most of us experience, when you transition from boy to man, or girl to woman, she journeyed with him, and it had been a ride.

He followed her everywhere. She has one of those people who you could become truly addicted to, even now, when she attracts attention fools surround her and hang on her every word, but he can’t blame them… he had been one of those fools. So post-uni he followed her North. He couldn’t call it Ygritte’s home; she didn’t really have one per-say. She just settled where she wanted and filled it with her laughter and her rebellious joy. She was infectious. She was consuming.

Of course, in the Far North, despite his Degree in Architecture, there is little call for grand schemes and design of magnitude and importance where people are so sparse, where infrastructure and industry do not exist, but he followed her all the same.

Then Ygritte fell pregnant. He supposes he saw his life mapping out in a certain way. Guy falls in love at University, the move in together, then _baby – engagement – marriage – in whatever order they pleased_. In hindsight it’s not hard to work out that Jon just wanted everything he didn’t have when he was growing up. He’s quite text-book when it comes to his apparent issues that have always lurked beneath the surface with his superhero mum and absentee father. Lyanna Snow was a great woman, the greatest, but her life wasn’t easy and the crux of being a parent (Jon would later come to realise) is just always wanting _more_ for your child.

They separated when Lya was one. They continued to live together, for her sake, and because they wanted to share the responsibility of her youngest and most precious years. The reason for said separation, or as Ygritte so affectionately coined it; _the unchaining_ , is because she didn’t want the _baby – engagement – marriage – in whatever order they pleased_. Lya was here then, bright and bonny with stars in her young eyes. Ygritte had always been flighty and prone to changing her mind and decisions like the northern weather, but once Lya had stormed into their lives, Jon just couldn’t accept that anymore. She was his everything, and all others took a back seat.

He’s not perfect, this he knows more than any other fact in the world. Where Ygritte was full of life and fun, Jon was prone to spells of melancholy and would lose himself in thought for hours at a time which frustrated Ygritte to no end. They made their separation work as best they could, eventually living apart. Jon would have Lya for five days, Ygritte for two. People found it odd, the juxtaposition of their relationship, normally the mother took the main custody of the child, right? And dear old dad had the weekends, or every other… wrong. Ygritte was more than happy with the set up, and so was Jon, until a few months ago.

At the age of thirty Ygritte had decided on a new path. She wanted to travel more, homeopathy and herbal medicine research, even further North of course. It was the only part of the continent where you seemed to be able to up sticks and decide on a new life at the drop of a hat. Jon had put his foot down. Ygritte had agreed to only being away four weeks at a time, returning a few days at a time. Her new contract for the hum-drum mother-earth-is-better research position was only for a year, and she wanted to try it.

Now, in Jon’s mind, and when he tries to explain their dynamic, he is aware their story can often come across casting Ygritte in a harsh light, he knows that’s unfair, her version of caring is different to his, and he knows she loves their daughter, but she just isn’t fussed about the things that Jon worries about, like moving around too much and disrupting Lya’s schooling. He wants to put down roots, but Ygritte sees these as chains. Her pregnancy was a shock to them both, not something Ygritte had ever planned or anticipated, and it had been a struggle for her. Jon had always seen struggle as something to overcome, but no two people are them same, especially Jon and Ygritte.

Jon is and had always been abundantly happy about being the main influence in Lya’s life. They named her for his mother, and he sees it as his personal privilege and honour to love her with every fibre of his soul. That’s what he is doing now. Ygritte intends to spend two, three days tops in visiting Lya every four weeks, so what is keeping them in Hardhome exactly?

Ygritte’s decision to upend her life, and by extension Jon and Lya’s has given them the perfect opportunity to expand their horizons, better housing, better schools, actual human beings for company and better jobs with better pay. That’s where Robb Stark comes into their story. Robb was an uncommonly good person, an old university mate, who despite the eons of snow-filled vastness between them, he had never been able to shake. Seven years later he still got a gods-awful Christmas card, and the occasional email when their business crossed paths. It’s been a while, so long he had forgotten exactly how to be friends with Robb Stark, but clearly Robb will be damned if he will let him.

Ygritte had never liked Robb. He and Jon had chummed up immediately in their shared lectures. Ygritte had found Robb’s his kindness untrustworthy, always worried about what someone with a daddy as rich as his would want with someone like Jon. He thankfully, wasn’t as shallow. When they bumped into one another in Molestown at some horrendous expo three months ago it was like nothing changed, their nights at the student union had morphed into too many whiskey’s in a hotel bar but everything else was just normal, natural, easy.

Robb had, as expected, joined his father’s firm, a Northern powerhouse of building design, the big kind of outfit that Jon had once dreamed of joining after university. Dream no more Jon Snow. Jon specialised in designs of a more traditional nature, call him old fashioned all you like, using ancient building techniques and materials, someone, who as Ned Stark approached his upcoming retirement in the next few years, they were desperate for. Ned and Robb Stark had bitten his arm off with an offer which far exceeded his actual ability in Jon’s humble opinion. He had declined, as politely as possible initially, he had Lya and her life was not in Wintertown, but Ygritte had given him the opportunity to change that six weeks ago, and here they were. Jon wasn’t too used to falling on his feet so easily, but he was unlikely to sniff his nose at such a change of events.

“Sweetheart, are you ready?” Jon stood at the bottom of the staircase of their new home, nearly free of still unpacked carboard boxes – nearly. Robb had helped him find it, the white clad house looked like something off a postcard and nestled sweetly on the outskirts of the main town, it was almost village like in location. He loved it. Lya did too, well she loved the bedroom bigger than their last flat and the garden that she said was _just so perfect for a puppy_. He was almost certain Robb had whispered that in her ear.

“Daddy just wait two minutes,” Lya called from upstairs, his six going on sixteen-year-old daughter had enough personality for the two of him. If she could see him right now, he would be trying to fight a smile, but he didn’t have to hide how much her sparky nature amused him.

“You have one minute, Meera will be here soon to take you to school.”

Uncommonly-good-Robb-Stark had also helped him find Meera. Nanny extraordinaire. She dated one of Robb’s brothers and he recommended her as being absolutely normal, which was an excellent start. Jon’s job was busy, and he had always had help with Lya. He wasn’t superman and nor was he too proud to say he couldn’t do this on his own.

“You don’t have to mate,” Robb had told him, arriving on their moving day with a crate of Guinness and his friend Theon in tow, who spent more of the day throwing Lya into the air than actually helping him and Robb to lug boxes.

“We look after one another here,” Robb had shrugged at Jon’s perplexed astonishment at someone actually giving a shit.

“I’m ready, I’m ready, I’m ready,” Lya puffed, bouncing down the stairs.

“Good, here we go sweetheart,” he murmured, passing her rucksack and slipping her headband into her hair since he recently found out that _everyone has a headband daddy_.

She’s beautiful, his daughter, especially now, looking up at him, crinkle eyed, and nose scrunched together, mimicking his concentration as he ensured her curls fall just-so around her face. He always tries to be attentive, so she knows she is as loved as he was as a boy, one parent or not, but he is even more so today, as that flighty mistress called parental guilt robs him of any rationale thinking. He’s promised Robb he would go out with him tonight, and Theon too, who he cannot help but find utterly hilarious, no matter how inappropriate his mouth happened to be. Its only taken Robb six weeks to grind him down, but Lya adores Meera, he trusts her too, so now is a good a time as any for some solely adult conversation and hopefully a beer, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that he feels kind of bad about it. Not that his sweetheart seems to care.

“After-school-Meera-said-we-can-paint-and-then-eat-ice-cream-before-dinner-but-I’m-not-supposed-to-tell-you-that-so-you-are-not-allowed-to-say-anything.”

His daughter is at that age when she doesn’t breathe, at all, once, during whole sentences. She is also physically unable to tell a lie, for which he is eternally grateful, he is certain he will be even more so when she is sixteen and trying to sneak out for the first time.

But she’s six, and she’s had a hard time settling at school. So ice cream before dinner with Meera, who has been a fast and firm friend to Lya these last few weeks is a concession he will happily make, especially if the sugar-rush has well and truly ended by the time he gets home.

“Have a good day sweetheart.”

“Have a good day daddy,” she replies, as always, wrapping her delicate little arms around his legs and like every morning, he could burst at the thought that he has this little girl’s heart.

Wintertown will be good for them. Lya will find her feet at school and make friends, as fickle as six-year olds can be. She’s smart, she has every chance here to achieve anything she sets her mind too. Jon has a true friend in Robb Stark, who have fallen back into step with one another like nothing has happened. Jon can give Lya structure and he can be happy in the career he was so desperate to take on all those years ago. Wintertown will be good for them, he feels it in his bones. He just hopes he’s right.


	2. Chapter 2

“It has listed building status, so the Northern Heritage committee are going to be up our backsides with conditions. We’ll never met the design brief unless the client makes some compromises,” Robb sighed, rubbing his temple, his errant auburn curls flopping theatrically as he slumped back into his hair. He had always had a touch for the dramatics in their way-ward twenties, not seeing each other for days at a time because Jon was off with Ygritte or studying, only for Robb to pop up once more and declare himself in love with the nicest girl he had ever met, the next week would be much the same, just with a new lady love.

Jon finds uncommonly-good-Robb-Stark an interesting man to observe. He hasn’t spent much time with Ned Stark, but the short number of meetings or briefs they have shared makes it easy to see that Robb seems to soak up the goodness of others before distributing said goodness ten-fold. A carbon-copy of his father, maybe not in looks, but certainly in conviction. So even as he sits in Jon’s new office, which is far too bright and airy and even features a fern that apparently Ned Stark’s own wife brought him personally, Robb still seems eager to try and hide his ire, save it rub off onto anyone else.

“The Northern Heritage committee are here for reasons just like this,” Jon cannot help but tease, “so jumped-up little architects like you don’t wipe our whole countries history off the map, one high-rise block of glass flats at a time.”

“You would say that, you’re just trying to get up my dad’s ass, he would say the exact same thing…”

“That’s why I’m here,” Jon sighs, “to make sure the North doesn’t turn into some glass made warehouse.”

“Aye, that’s why you’re here, point taken,” Robb grins, tucking his pen behind his ear and making to leave, back to the safety of his own office with a view, “Oh, so when we’re finished I thought we’d head to the local, normal sort of pub thing, nothing over the top…”

Jon nods with as much gusto as he can muster, despite feeling more apprehensive about Lya’s first night away from him since the move, because he knows she’s not settling as well as he would have hoped at school.

“Theon’s coming, I’m afraid you will never be rid of him now he thinks you are ‘alright’, which really is a ringing endorsement from him… Oh and my sisters might turn up, sometimes they do,” he shrugged non-committedly.

“Right, your sisters, you have three, don’t you?”

“Two,” Robb corrects and Jon makes a mental note, because it honestly has been years, and Jon has only the vague recollection of his sisters from their University days, the sporty one and the girly one, or something like that, but they were both far more interested in girls who were no relation to either of them at the time to be really paying attention.

Jon and Robb were good friends at University, but Jon was never the type of bloke to covert friendships and relationships, he sort of stumbled into them. Aside from their time spent sharing lectures and the occasional wayward night out, they never visits one another at their homes in the holidays, but he’s glad that’s changing, he had always secretly wanted a brother of sorts.

Plus, Jon has already made the mistake of referring to Robb’s mum as Cath, which apparently would not go down well, so he’s determined to pay more attention, because if one thing has become apparent since his move to Wintertown, it is that Robb has truly taken him into the fold.

He seems to be the type of person that collects strays like an animal shelter.

“Thanks for doing this Robb,” Jon starts, and waves off Robb’s answering retort in which he is sure he will deny doing anything at all, “no seriously I mean it, all of it… the help with the house, the school, being so welcoming… I know I haven’t been the best mate over the years, I can’t even remember your family’s names and you’ve just been…”

“Jon, calm down mate, that’s more words than I’ve ever heard you say,” he laughed, “so what, you were busy during uni, I hardly put you ahead of any girls I was chasing, so what, you were busy after, you have a fucking little girl, who is bloody amazing by the way… shit happens, I don’t judge you for it.”

“I know, you’re just so nice all the time…”

“Thanks gorgeous, but you really aren’t my type,” Robb drawls, heading towards the door, “you know mate, it shouldn’t be weird for you when people are nice to you,” he shrugs, all previous trace of humour gone from his eyes.

Isn’t that the truth, kindness shouldn’t be an uncommon thing, and maybe it doesn’t have to be anymore.

“Anyway, I better go before I start to sob, see you at 6pm sharp Snow, first rounds on you, you’re the one with the fancy office now…”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter Sansa...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, some things of note;  
> \- I understand that in a modern Westeros, the French language (a country that does not exsist) would not be spoken. But work with me, this is ballet darlings, and the ballet aspects of this fic are based entirely on my own experiences. I went to a wonderful ballet school in which there was a woman who played the piano for the classes, and we addressed her as Madame and gave her a curtsey and a recited our thanks in French at the end of each lesson. We were also encouraged to speak French during our classes, I had one mistress who would not entertain speaking in any other language once we reached a certain grade. It was very traditional, very European, and bloody marvellous. A time I look back on fondly. 
> 
> Also... one of the main inspirations for the fic came from a wonderful documentary I watched over Christmas on the BBC, about the Royal Ballet's production of the Nutcracker at the Royal Opera House in London. I think it is still on BBC iplayer if you can catch it!

“Ok, girls, to the piano, let’s say thank you to Madame Mordane,” Sansa smiled at the assembled group of six and seven-year olds as they flutter to the piano and take up their positions. Their wonderful keeper of the ivory keys tinkers the opening bar of the familiar piece that always ends each of her classes.

The girls curtsey deeply, in the traditional way that Sansa was once taught at the age of five as they all speak in time with one another.

“Merci beaucoup Madame Mordane. Merci beaucoup Miss Sansa.”

“Wonderful, thank you girls. I will see you next week.”

Her dear Mordane, who once taught her how to play the piano when she was just shy of ten years old, who insists on staying with her now and that no one else could be trusted to play the piano in all of her classes, walks purposefully to the door to let in the parents, as her students flit around her, filled with questions and nattering’s to one another about todays lessons. They are doing so well, all of her students are, from the little ones in baby-ballet, to those souring each grade, en pointe and auditioning for dance schools across the country, it’s like falling back in time, and no matter what has happened to her in recent years, it makes her heart happy.

The ache in her heart of a little girl lost, with a head full of dreams that did not quite come to pass as she thought is still there, but it’s a dull ache now, barely there, hum-hum-humming beneath the happiness she has carved for herself.

Signing with the Royal Ballet at the age of eighteen had been all Sansa had ever wanted. A true dream come true. She had been eager, desperate even to leave the North, not batting an eye lid at the thought of living alone in a strange city at such a young age, she had studied her craft nine months of the year in the south from the age of twelve at the Royal Ballet School, so to join their ranks was as a professional the easiest decision she had ever made. It was after all, what every sacrifice and hard learnt lesson had been about. She signed as a soloist, battered pointe shoes thrown around her shoulders, pirouetting to the capital. She became a principle dancer by the age of twenty-one.

Now to give all of that up, return to the homeland where her dreams were first born may seem outwardly insane to others, especially those in the world she had become so engrossed. Those people, however, barely know her story, not really. Her life has become some sort of ironic romantic comedy, which in all honestly is lacking in the romance department, she’s become a walking cliché.

Country Girl who moved to the big city. The naive little bird who played with fire and got her fingers burnt in return. Unlike those romantic comedies she used to love, she never got her peppy pop song at the end and the chap to sweep her off her feet after some bumbling, awkward and ultimately swoon worthy declaration of love.

She has been home for a year now, new house, new job, new dreams? Maybe? She just loves to dance, she loves to see others dance too, so she teaches, but isn’t that how she got herself into this mess? A teacher who should have known better… Sansa, who should have known better.

The first thing Sansa did when she returned North was secure the location of her studio. It’s a beautiful place, one she would not trust in the hands of just anyone. It’s one of those buildings that used to be a warehouse, a factory or a wharf building or something, with ceilings that are so high she has to get a special contractor in the manage the lights, the windows run from the wooden bars lining the walls to the top of the ceiling, it lets that perfect winter-light stream through no matter the month, its glorious, with white painted walls, black window frames, everything she rustled up in her head, on a sketch pad or her Pinterest board.

She roped her long-suffering Papa into helping her paint, and Robb and Theon, although the pair of them deserve a little more suffering if you ask her. They wheeled in the piano themselves, the sprung flooring had set her back a pretty penny, but she’d done a perfume campaign when they called for a ballerina about a year back and she’d saved the lucrative fee for a rainy day, and on cue, in perfect Northern form, of course today it is raining.

Three months after her return home, questions and furrowed brows of concern from her family politely ignored, the Northern School of Ballet was opened with Sansa, the principal mistress at the helm. Sansa appreciated all forms of dance, but she was a traditionalist at heart, a romantic, and she modelled her school, or as she called it her _little bird_ , on the schools she had attended as a girl, with the piano as their main musical source, speaking in French as much as possible, pointe shoes at the correct age no matter how much this disheartened the little ones.

Take up was instantaneous, the school quickly gathering the kind of prestige of one of the southern ballet schools of old. There were not many in the North, and in hindsight having a well-known ballerina opening her own school in the bleak wilds of Wintertown in which the teachings and traditions of the Royal Ballet School are so clearly reflected will make people talk. Thankfully, said school, where she was essentially raised and later joined their company, have left her alone so far, and for that she is eternally grateful.

Her family, as always, have been the most amazing support, even now a year later when things are flying. She will have to get some help soon if things continue going so well. In classic Stark form, despite her many formative years being spent in the south, her wild family rally whenever called, even now, at the end of her class, her niece sits at her feet and carefully unlaces the ribbons around Sansa’s ankles, its their own little tradition, and the Starks love their histories.

“Mummy’s there my riverbabe,” Sansa whispers, wrapping her arms around her precious niece as Arya hustles her way around the other parents, stopping for the odd greeting. It’s so odd to Sansa, that out of them all, Arya is the one to have settled down first, but her and Gendry just make so much sense. Their daughter is a wonder, hair and eyes just like her fathers and most shockingly, she shares little of Arya’s singular personality, but Sansa’s. This brings her an untold amount of smug joy, it was one of the nicest surprises on Sansa’s return, that her niece liked sweet things, had a delicate outlook on the world and was at heart a dreamer. She knows Arya loves the fact too, after one temper tantrum as a toddler when their little riverbabe just didn’t want to get covered in mud, thank you very much, Arya happily admitted defeat and learned how to braid hair and plait it with ribbons through you-tube videos like the best of them.

Gendry had wanted to name her something light and beautiful, like Willow or River, some sort of nod to his aquatic surname. Hence Sansa’s affectionate nickname. Arya, however, had other ideas, her prim and quiet daughter is named Ned much to her father’s delight. It fits, in typical Arya form, she would of course shun expectations and name her daughter after their father. Arya is so like their father, even more so since she has become a parent herself, Ned Stark encouraged his children to be whatever they wanted to be, and to do whatever they wanted to do, Sansa had no interest in Rugby or Fencing, and he seemed equally chuffed when he brought her the first pair of ballet slippers she owned. Arya is much the same, if little Ned wants to dance, she’ll damn well dance.

“Sorry, I wanted to catch the end of your lesson,” Arya grumbles good-naturedly, scooping Ned up who is far too gangly like Gendry to fit easily into her sisters arms anymore, not that she will let that stop her.

“Don’t worry mummy,” Ned whispers sweetly, resting her head into the crook of Arya’s neck.

“What are you doing tonight? Robb mentioned popping to the pub,” Sansa asked. This was something she had enjoyed no end since her return, quality time at the drop of a hat with her siblings and friends.

“I don’t think so tonight, I promised this one pyjamas and a movie,” Arya jostled Ned in her arms as she giggled.

“Mummy said I can stay up late no matter what daddy says.”

Sansa affectionately twirls a strand of Neds hair around a finger as she laughs at her, because even when she is making fun of poor, outnumbered Gendry she is still unflinchingly polite about it.

“I’m sure she did, riverbabe. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Sansa places a kiss at Ned’s brow at the promise of her babysitting which she knows Ned has been looking forward to all week.

“Thanks Sans, I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing,” because really she doesn’t, they are family, and Sansa has already missed so much, “its your anniversary, as long as I don’t hear the details…” Sansa trails off at the sound of her phone going off on the table by the piano, the irritating sing-song voice chants _oh I do like to be beside the sea-side_ , a tone reserved only for Theon’s messages, which he annoyingly set months ago and she has never been able to remove. Messages from Theon are rarely dull.

**Theon: You will never guess who I just saw… Harry-fucking-Hardyng. That’s right. He asked how you were. The prick. You’ll never guess what I said to him… I said mate, she asked me to pass on a diagram detailing where the clitoris is. Genius. I astound myself with my greatness sometimes.**

Theon Greyjoy is a dick, an actual dick. She loves him, would likely kill from him, but that does not take away from the fact that her dearest friend is in fact an over-sharing, outrageous, sexual deviant who she really needs to stop telling her business to.

When it comes to Harry-fucking-Hardyng, she’s absolutely over it, an ill-fated summer romance when she was twenty on summer break in which she returned to Wintertown for the season. His lack of understanding about said female anatomy did not stop him from simultaneously sleeping with several other women during that summer. She doesn’t condone violence, but she remembers feeling a certain amount of smugness when both Robb and Theon both managed to land a solid hit to his jaw when they accosted him in the corner of some dingy club with some poor woman whose clitoris was likely as neglected as hers.

It’s also worth mentioning that her doomed liaison with Harry-fucking-Hardyng led to her intent to experience the more mature gentleman, which, no matter the damage said gentleman caused to her life, it had certainly been an education. Of that, she would never be in denial.

Despite all of these facts. Sansa is understandably furious. She’s over it, she does not need her idiot friend-pseudo-brother fighting her battles for her with a man she hasn’t thought about in many, many years, she’s twenty-seven now and has known far greater heartbreak, she can still feel the cracks to the one that has hit her hardest, even a year away from Kings Landing hasn’t healed her wounds she has scampered away to lick.

She wordlessly hands over her phone to Arya who is cocking an eyebrow in amusement as her huffing and puffing. Such things are not for her riverbabes ears, and the lack of being properly taken care of by a partner is not something Ned needs to know about for at least another fifty years in Sansa’s book.

“Oh, he is so dead,” Arya whispers in smug glee, chucking to herself, already turning towards the lobby of the studio, “say good-bye to Auntie Sansa Ned, she’s off to find a squid for dinner,” because Arya always has been a messy bitch who lives for drama, Sansa likely suspects she is secretly sad to miss her tear Greyjoy a new one.

“That sounds nice Auntie Sansa,” Ned says far too sweetly, the s’s in her name slurring so deliciously with her little lisp that has been caused by the recent disappearance of her front teeth. That had cost Uncle Robb a pretty fee in tooth-fairy charges, in which he had also tried to give Ned a lesson in the current state of the financial market and inflation. Poor thing.

“Thank you, my sweet girl, be good for mama.”

“Oh Sans, at least get changed, there isn’t much ferocious about a leotard and tights,” her sister drawls, “have fun at the pub for me, love to Theon et cetera.”

She has a point, hair bound in a bun that it tighter than sin and likely contributing to her frustrated and angry state, and her look is more Nutcracker than murderess, plus its Friday, tomorrow is her busiest day at the studio, so after killing her best friend and quietly disposing of his body she fully intends to have at least four gin and tonics.

Yes, fun she intends to have indeed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is a whole chapter of Jon having an internal crisis.

“I just don’t get it,” Jon began, listening to Theon’s tale in rapt confusion as Robb laughed uncontrollably at the pair of them.

“What’s not to get, Jonathan?”

“Jon, just Jon.”

“As you were, Jonathan,” Theon flicked his wrist for emphasis before sitting back smugly in his chair, like the cat that got the cream.

“I just don’t get how you can have a girlfriend and a boyfriend who are also a couple.”

Hardhome, it turns out, does not have its own Theon Greyjoy.

“My sweet summers child, they were the couple first, and now I’m just a delicious little add-on. Alas, it wont last, such delights rarely do,” Theon sighed, looking across to the bar forlornly.

“Not with your commitment issues anyway,” Robb said under his breath.

Jon had learnt two things so far tonight, and they were only two drinks in. The first, was that the Wolf’s Head was your typical and traditional Northern pub. He adored it on sight, in only the way a northerner can, with its mismatched chairs and the grumbling landlord. Every northerner from the Neck to Last Hearth was raised in such boozers, and it felt like home. The second was that Theon Greyjoy was a rake. His tales where so blue they made Jon feel like a sister in a regency novel. It was in equal parts amusing and petrifying. Jon really needed a fucking date if he couldn’t handle Theon’s no-doubt exaggerated tales of his threesome.

As promised, Jon had gotten the first round, then Robb the second, and because they weren’t animals and could follow general pub decorum, Theon had already stated his intent to get the next once they all _hurried the fuck along lads_.

“What you need, Jon, my dear friend, is a girl,” Theon said sagely, as if he had just thought up the answer to the national debt.

“I have a girl,” Jon quipped.

“You have an angel,” Robb interjected, “a six-year-old angel, but I think what our little Theon is saying… is that you need a _fucking_ girl Snow. Like a conversation at least, a date even better.”

“You’re both idiots,” Jon grumbled good-naturedly sinking the lukewarm remains of his drink.

“I just feel sorry for your balls, that’s all I’m saying… my round.” Theon stood and offered them a quick salute before ambling his way to the bar and the grumbling landlord.

Robb sighed and leaned closer to him, “he means well mate, he just says things in his own special way,” Robb grinned, pulling a hand through his hair, “and just because you have a daughter doesn’t mean you are dead inside. No matter what, Lya would want you to be happy. She won’t start doing meth in the playground because you talk to another woman.”

“Sometimes you give really shit advice do you know that,” Jon said dryly, but making a mental note to check for any recent news reports of meth in local schools.

He knows Robb is working his way up to muttering some off the cuff comment about him using sarcasm as a defence mechanism, but in the years to come Jon will look back and remember this moment and the source of the lucky/unlucky interruption in the form of the individual shouting in the doorway of the pub as the game-changer Jon was not aware he needed.

_“Theon Victarion Greyjoy!”_

If Jon could think coherently, he would want to mentally log that fact that Theon’s middle name is Victarion, and that he could dine out on this gold little nugget for years to come. But Jon absolutely cannot think coherently, not with the sight of one of the most singular women he has ever seen marching up to poor little Victarion followed by her blaze of beautiful copper hair. She’s miraculous. He can’t take his eyes off her.

“How dare you accost Harry- _fucking_ -Hardyng in the street like some sort of heathen! Were you dragged up?”

Gods. She’s fantastic. The unfamiliar and other-worldly woman is a combination of all of his best fantasies come to life. Pale skin, miles of which is on display on account of her bare legs which honestly, people should be forewarned about, her skin is like milk and honey, winter warmed in a china cup. She’s got one of those faces that are just classic, the kind you don’t see anymore, only in the black and white movies they put on around Christmas. She’s angry too, which has always done it for him, passionate and stormy but with a stillness he’s never had directed at him before. It’s different. He’s not sure how someone can simultaneously be both fiery and chillingly icy at the same time and he wonders what Theon has done to deserve it.

Where Ygritte’s ire had always been obvious and explosive, mystery-beauty is quietly furious. Its glorious.

He’s also slightly losing it by the fact she stage whispered the word _fucking_ when talking about this Harry twat, who ever he might be, like the word is beneath her. She’s a good girl too, that much is obvious. Yes, Jon is aware of how completely fucked he is.

His brain is still not entirely in normal working order. He’s briefly aware of Robb chuckling to himself beside him as he takes in the scene in front of them, mystery-beauty is still berating Theon under her breath, tugging on his arm for good measure, clearly exasperated by his lack of even the smallest shred of remorse for his alleged sins.

“Fucking hells,” Jon murmurs, absent-mindedly, because now she’s got her hand on her hips and its so prim and haughty that he cannot think straight.

“I know, poor bloke,” Robb responds.

“Look at her,” Jon breathes, “how did Greyjoy get a woman like that?”

This is the moment they will all remember as the time he should have just shut his mouth. Unfortunately though, he is Jon Snow, and behaving with some ounce of decorum has never come easy to him.

“What?”

Jon still hasn’t cast his friend another glance. Mystery-beauty is now laughing and its rather distracting as she tips her head back and her hair falls back to her waist, like rivers of fire and he would happily singe off his own fingertips just to run his hands through it.

“Her,” Jon motions in front of him because he’s an idiot, “she’s fucking… beautiful.”

Robb is openly laughing now, “I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick mate,” he says, patting him on the shoulder like he’s a wounded animal, or inherently idiotic, he is both of course.

Jon continues to ignore him now though, because now Theon has wrapped his arm around her shoulder, a beer precariously in each hand as she manages the third beer followed by the tumbler which is obviously for her blessed, dreamy hand as they make their way towards their table.

“…and if you ever confront any of my exes ever again, I will cut your body into the smallest pieces, and slowly distribute piece by piece into the Wolfswood day by day until you cease to exist in this world. I won’t even grace you with the respect of a burial at sea, do you understand me?” mystery-beauty speaks so coldly is makes him shiver and long for his log-burner and he cannot help but admire her threat, despite the quirk of her lip in one corner.

“Look, baby…” Theon counters but is quickly ignored.

“I’m not your baby.” The added flick of her copper and auburn tresses really make her dismissal hit home.

He wants to rejoice. You tell him. She’s not your fucking baby Greyjoy.

“Baby, think of the bigger picture here, I was doing a service to womenkind. Be a good feminist,” he says as he slides the beers onto the table as they finish their approach, “think of whatever poor woman who will have the misfortune of being grossly unfulfilled by Harry-fucking-Hardyng and his inability to find your…”

“If you utter another word, I will call your sister, so help me…”

It’s at that moment she notices Robb’s continuous howls of laughter and then her gaze flicks across to Jon. It’s that moment that he notices her eyes for the first time. She’s a beautiful woman, one of a fucking kind, but her eyes could just about end him, as could the way she shyly bites her bottom lip after being caught in such an emotive display.

“Jon…” Robb calls for him and he has to – absolutely needs – to look away from her, because she just continues to stare, biting that lip and looking at him like he is the most interesting thing she has seen in a long time, so he cowardly looks to his friend instead.

“Jon… let me introduce you,” Robb continues, looking pleased as punch, indecently so, he can practically see the cogs whirring in uncommonly-good-Robb-Stark’s head, and if he had his senses he would know to be a little unnerved by how cheerful he looks, “this is Sansa… Sansa Stark, my sister.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next.   
> The evening continues. What does Sansa think of our Mr Snow?


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An evening in the Wolf's Head continues.

Sansa’s in a pickle. That much is clear.

Objectively, her current situation is fairly normal, your bog-standard Friday night in the Wolf’s Head. She’s spent many a weekend here since she came home. Pub’s in Kings Landing just do not compare. It’s a homely little haven with pleasant faces, she even fondly greets the grumbling landlord who’s bark is worse than his bite. His ire is like a warm embrace. The air is warm from the fire crackling in the corner and the lights that glow like old oil lamps on the walls make her think of home. Theon’s got his arm slung around her shoulder whilst twittering away his usual nonsense. She has long forgiven his transgression from earlier in the day, mainly because he has got one of those faces that is just so damn forgivable, he called her Legs and begged forgiveness in the form of as many Hendricks and cucumbers as she can consume. Honestly, how can a girl refuse? Her head will likely be drowsily sequestered on his shoulder by the time the grumbling landlord rings the bell for last orders.

Her brother is a worry though. Robb’s looking at her with that glint in his eye, that all knowing stare that they both learnt at Catelyn Stark’s apron strings. Her gin and tonic sits heavy in her stomach. She’ll need another three at least, if she’s to make it through the night with her wits about her.

What’s different about tonight is the tall drink of water sitting next to her brother. Actually, the comparison to H2O really doesn’t do him justice. He’s more like a pristine bottle of Pinot Noir, the kind that you buy to impress your grandmother with when you bring it with you for Sunday Lunch, the kind of wine she really is just desperate to uncork, let it breathe and then slip down her throat, warm and heavy until she feels it in her bones. This man is like her preferred vintage. Tall. Dark. Handsome.

Ok, she really should stop comparing men to drinks.

Especially Jon. She managed to catch his name, for that she’s grateful. Jon Snow. His name even makes her want to shiver. She’s been staring when Robb made his usual polite introductions and it struck her that she likely appears aloof, which is not her modus operandi. Sansa is calm, and steady, this is known, perfectly polite Sansa Stark is not a flapping female at the first sight of a delectable man.

And he is lovely. Really lovely. She has known many a person to pay astronomical amounts to surgically enhance their lips like the ones that perfectly wrap around his beer bottle. She can’t work out if his hair is just like that, his inky curls sinfully falling as they do, or if he has spent a good ninety minutes to achieve his look. He hasn’t smiled, not once, in seven minutes, not that she’s counting, and she longs to know what it would do to his features, to let it see how his beard warps around it, if it lingers in his eyes.

It’s a shame he is sitting, slumped artfully behind their table. She wonders what his body is like, but if the way he is wearing that pressed shirt is anything to go about. Maybe it is a small mercy that she can only see he shoulders, lovely as they are.

His eyes though. Hells. She wants to run into the loo and scream at her face in the mirror.

Sansa Stark is in a pickle indeed.

She’s heard about him of course. Robb and her father had waxed lyrical about his keen eye at work when she last had lunch at her parent’s house. It’s odd though. Robb talks about Jon like they are close, really close, but they’ve never even crossed paths. Not that it should matter, Sansa led an entire life apart from her family for years, so she is a fine one to talk.

Her immediate reaction to Mr Pinot Noir is completely physical. This is a strange revelation. She hasn’t reacted this way since the first time she had felt another mans strong hands hold her by the waist as he lifted her in the air like she was nothing in a warm studio in Kings Landing. Even that feels like a lifetime ago now.

Suddenly she feels foolish. The last thing she needs is to lose her head in another ill-fated dalliance. Especially with another person who is already too wrapped in her life, or more so the people around her. Her brothers friend, who also works for her father. No, silly girl, she’s gotten ahead of herself in the time it takes to near the bottom of her first glass. She never learns. Nothing breaks like a heart, and Sansa’s had enough of that, thank you very much. One glance by a pair of soulful grey eyes and she feels embarrassed by how she has just carried on in her head. No harm done though, her head is a shed, as Ned Stark would say. Her mind is her own mess to manage.

Theon’s blathering on about some teacher at the local school he quite likes the look of, jabbering something about how she has ankles to die for or some nonsense and he is ready to enter the _girl-next-door_ phase of his dating life, the ass. His hand that is wrapped around her shoulder is gesturing wildly enough to jostle Sansa into her senses, directing her attention back to the table and simultaneous swat Theon away with the hand that isn’t nursing her drink.

“…so, Snow, maybe I call roll up with Lya one day and she could introduce me to little miss teacher?” Theon rubs his palm where Sansa has just pinched him and then slings his arm right back around her.

“You are not using my daughter as a way to further inflict yourself on the population of Wintertown,” Jon says levelly, not missing a beat.

“Ok _daddy_ ,” Theon quips.

Wow.

“Please don’t call me that…”

“Yes, please don’t,” Robb sighs, unbothered to hide his exasperation.

Sansa has missed half of the amusing exchange, ok aside from the daddy comment, because just wow.

More importantly than Sansa’s desperately not-self-inflicted celibacy riddled thoughts, he has a daughter. She’s not sure why it surprises her. He’s gorgeous, clever too, judging by the profession he shares with her brother and father. Its no wonder he’s a family man. She finds herself leaning forward, itching to know more.

“Lya? Is that your daughter Jon?” She asked. Excellent. Theon just said is, and Jon confirmed it. Genius Sans.

He snaps his eyes to her, face swivelling head on as he sits opposite her, arms nestled on the table with his shirt sleeves rolled up. He’s got hands that just look made for devilish deeds. She’s always been a sucker for a big palm-print.

“Yeah,” he breathes out.

Silence falls. Her lips smile as her brow furrows and thankfully, mercifully, Robb Stark takes pity.

“You should see this kid Sans, she’s a super-star. Bright as a button ands by the gods the cutest thing since you in pigtails and dungarees.”

She scoffs at the embarrassing reference to her not-so-glory-days. Thank the gods for puberty.

“That was a long time ago, Robb,” she scolds him, only half mocking.

“Yep,” Theon Greyjoy, the devil reincarnate just has to put his two pennies worth in, “Our little Sansa is all grown up, with legs for days and a smart mouth to match.”

“Shut up, Theon,” her and Robb say in unison before grinning to one another as he clinks his beer against her glass in solidarity. Jon’s resolutely not looking at any of them.

“You have always been… what’s the word?” Robb interjects, putting his finger to his chin for emphasis, and she knows that look, that fucking half-feral mischievous stare that only Arya, Rickon and Robb amongst the Starks are blessed with, and she knows he is up to no good, “how would we describe you? Hmm… that’s it… beautiful, you’ve always been beautiful sweet sister.”

She’s blushing under his praise. People have always said she was beautiful, but she knows when its sincere and when it’s just posturing. It’s a skill she learnt many years ago, something she called the Kings Landing effect.

She risks a glance up and meets Jon’s gaze which is already firmly locked on her over his beer bottle. Grey eyes meet blue and she looks away in a flash because their mutual stare is too heavy, too intrusive. She burrows into Theon further where she is safer. Theon, for his faults, is not a man who misses much, and she can feel his appraisal, eyebrow cocked her way in piqued interest out of the corner of her eye.

Sansa’s hands itch for distraction. She sinks her gin to charge her courage.

“Tell me about her…”

The words coming out of her mouth seem to startle the man sitting across from her as much as they do her. She wonders why she has suddenly acquired Arya’s ability to speak without thinking, tonight of all nights.

“Oh, erm… Lya?” Jon looks awkward, his forehead furrowed as he actually-in-real-life looks up at her through his eyelashes.

She nods, head leaning into Theon’s shoulder. Her friend squeezes she shoulder but she ignores his silent inquiry and doesn’t try to decipher it.

Robb is aptly listening, eyes fliting between the group, settling too long on Theon in what she can only expect as the start of one of their wordless conversations that they have been having since they were ten. She hates to think what they are plotting.

“Lya’s amazing,” Jon shrugs, beginning easily, and its evident he has no struggles or insecurities when it goes to talking about his daughter, “she’s such a character, lively, bubbly, not like me,” he almost grimaces, “but sometimes she is like me, has moments of being quite, takes herself off on her own, you know?”

Sansa knows. She did the same for years.

She blinks deeply as his description settles just as the remnants of her gin and tonic washes over her too. Jon breezes on easily, five minutes go by where he tells them of his daughter, _his Lya_ , as he calls her. Not once does he offer any description about what she looks like, and that tells her more than anything else about the stranger sitting opposite her, that he values qualities over anything else and after years in King Landing, of trying to be the best at her craft and in her life, and constantly striving for perfection… its refreshing. As fresh as the December breeze that whips through her father’s sacred woodland around her childhood home.

Jon reminds her of her dear Ned Stark.

“…and that’s why its been hard, for her and me I think, because she normally just takes to people so quickly, she gets that from her mum,” he rolls his eyes, but it’s in an affectionate way, and Sansa can’t help how unsettled she feels about the mention of Lya’s mother.

She must be quite a woman.

“…she is just really struggling at school…”

Sansa blinks back to the conversation.

“At school?”

“Seems so, she hasn’t found it too easy making friends. Something hasn’t clicked. I can tell she’s down about it,” Jon frowns, clearly upset about his daughters struggle.

“Moving can be tough,” she offers sympathetically, “when I moved to Kings Landing it took me a good few years to settle.”

“Wintertown isn’t Kings Landing,” Robb huffs, his tell-tale flush of irritation makes his cheeks warm under her haughty glare. He has been over-protective since he dropped everything and came to pick her up from her flat in King Landing before turning tale so they could return North together. Any mention of that southern-hellhole, as he so charmingly calls it still gets his back up.

“Thank-you for that lesson in Geography Robbert,” she preens and Theon chuckles at her sass.

“You lived in Kings Landing?” Jon asks, seemingly surprised if his eyebrows disappearing into his night coloured curls are anything to go by.

“For years,” Robb huffs again, speaking before she can even take a breath, “but my sister, who is both amazing and… beautiful, has thankfully returned to the fatherland.”

“Dramatic Northern fool,” Theon sighs like a thespian.

Theon and Robb make no secret of their pleasure of her presence in her life. They tried to see one another as much as possible, but it was never the same. She knows they conspired together to make things and easy as it could be when she first came back to Wintertown in hope she would stay forever. Theon and Robb are just that, easy. They remind her of Christmas and warm pubs, home, muscle memory. They remind her of love.

Sansa giggles, actually giggles like a girl, even though it really isn’t funny. She’s blames the alcohol that is marbling the muscles of her back as she stretches like a cat in Theon’s arms.

“She should go to Sansa’s,” Robb states sagely, sounding far too much like their father.

Sansa, Theon and Jon who have all been smiling to themselves at her giggly state all seem equally perplexed by his sudden declaration.

Robb sighs with his ever-present theatrics and starts gesturing wildly between Jon and Sansa.

“Lya, she should go to Sansa’s.”

“Sansa’s?”

Thankfully Robb continues to take this one. She feels suddenly shy. It’s odd that being under Jon Snow’s sincere attention makes her feel more nervous than taking her position at the opening bar of music in front of a full house on the opening night of the Christmas season at the Royal Opera House in Kings Landing.

“Sansa has a ballet school, in town,” Robb offers and Sansa’s smiles shyly as Jon’s eyes linger on hers, “Our niece, Little Ned is Lya’s age, she goes there.”

“You teach kids… to dance I mean?”

“Yes, any age from three upwards, I have some senior and young adult classes too. It’s a great way to make friends, they are all such brilliant kids.”

“Sans is the brilliant one, aren’t you Legs? Best ballet mademoiselle in the North,” Theon offers sweetly, and she whispers a delicate _merci_ in his ear. As she glances up, Jon’s stare meets her eye and its hard to look away from his smoky contemplation. Its too close to they way she was captivated by a nice pair of eyes once upon a time in the South.

The silence should be awkward. It’s not. It’s consuming.

Just like everything else about Jon Snow, they way he looks at her, the way his Northern brogue stretches on and on, far longer than Robb or even her papa’s, the way his fingers glide the length of the condensation running down his beer bottle, the silence between them lingers.

She clears her throat before pressing on, “just think about it,” she shrugs, like she’s not all the fussed, when really she is, she can’t help but want to offer her aid to a little girl who might just fit in at her school, it might make her happy, “no pressure, we are very traditional in a ballet sense, but its not all pushy parents and hairspray. I don’t push them into examinations and grades unless they want to. Some of my little ones just come because they enjoy it.”

She’s always been a bit defensive about her methods. She doesn’t want people to think she’s bending the supple spines of ten-year-olds over the back of a bar whilst trying to cram their toes into pointe shoes before they can pirouette.

“Little Ned would look after her, she can come to a taster class if she wants, just to see what she thinks,” shrugging for the second time for emphasis. She flips open her bag and grabs her purse, placing one of her cards for the school on the table, she slides it across to him with her index finger, “here, take my details, if Lya likes the idea give me a call and we can arrange something.”

“Yeh Jon, take Sansa’s number,” Robb offers, that coy and completely unsubtle look glinting his blue eyes, the look that spells trouble, the look that reeks of mischief.

Jon is staring down at her card like it might catch fire at any moment. She feels like she might have put him on the spot a bit, but at least now he can ignore her offer if he wants. The show will go on, whatever he decided.

“Thank you, Sansa.” It takes a good thirty seconds, but he finally responds, glancing from the card to her warmly.

“Anytime,” she smiles, “its not easy trying to fit in somewhere new.”

She’s felt like little Lya before. Alone. The odd one out. No matter if your six or in your twenties, not belonging still stings just the same. She’s not sure how she knows, maybe it’s because she’s been discreetly trying to dissect every little thing about Mr Pinot Noir during their short exchange in the last hour or so, but she imagines Jon Snow has felt similar in that past. It’s all in the eyes. Sansa had that lonely, fragile glint in hers for so long after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few of your pesky little flowers have asked who Sansa's older and no doubt devilish ex-beau from her time in Kings Landing was... patience, my dear hearts. All shall be revealed in good time. 
> 
> I am just kind of slipping POV from Jon and Sansa as and when it seems appropriate to that chapter. I hope this is coming across ok! 
> 
> Rose x


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon gets his act together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is another update, take it and run, or glissade... merci.

It takes till Monday for Jon to call Sansa.

Strictly about ballet and Lya, of course. Strictly speaking, that is probably a lie too.

He stews on Sansa Stark for a few days. After his initial reaction to her _knock-you-on-your-ass_ levels of beauty, closely followed by the realisation that he allowed his fucking run away mouth to disclose the inner workings of his mind to her brother, yes, _her brother_ of all people, he soon realised that Sansa Stark was so much more than the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.

_Tell me about her._

Those four words had left him feeling like he had been chewed up and spat out. Women, as a rule, do not ask about his daughter. Maybe they do, on some level, when it becomes apparent, he has a child. Sure, they might ask how old she is, or what she looks like, but it’s all superficial with feigned politeness.

Sansa cares though. A couple hours in the pub with her, admittedly flagged by her resident bull-dog protectors of Theon and Robb, had made it very clear that she simply cared wholeheartedly about people. So, like the well brought up chap he was raised to be, he told her, anything and everything his frazzled and blind-sided brain could think of in that moment about his Lya.

She listened. She smiled in all the right places, nipping her rose-bloomed lips under her teeth, nodding when required, so he continued and continued.

Then she offered to help.

The ultimate nail in Jon Snow’s coffin of his own making hammered in when he discovered she’s a ballet teacher. Of course, she was. Someone, anyone, fucking kill him now.

He’s never really cared about ballet, or any form of dance before. He lacks the skill required in this department. There wasn’t much of an art scene in Hardhome and he can’t dance for toffee. It just makes sense though. He’s not the most cultured being, but even the most subtle of hair flips and the way she holds her neck tells him this woman is the epitome of grace.

Despite spending a nerve-wracking period of time in her company, and resolutely avoiding Robb’s knowing glance, she’s still a complete mystery to him. She seemed so guarded, happier talking about other people over herself. Her eyes remind her of the waters of Dorne from that long-past summer holiday he had there with his mum once, azure and still, glassy and deep, but the kind of deep water that you can still see all the way to the bottom of seem to hold a kind of sadness in them he’s never seen before.

That makes him ache. It weighs heavy on his shoulders.

He’d mentioned the ballet school to Lya, as promised on Saturday morning as they shared eggy-bread and chamomile tea.

“Yes daddy, yes, daddy, _please-please-please_. Please let me be a ballerina.”

His daughter was bouncing in her seat, splashes of tea dotting the kitchen table and plates and teacups clattering in her excitement.

“Breathe, Lya,” Jon had laughed at her enthusiasm, ruffling her dark and wild curls he had yet to tame into an acceptable hairstyle this morning.

“I am breathing daddy, this is not something to laugh about!”

He sobered quickly at her serious nature. It still knocked him for six how she could switch from Ygritte’s spontaneous joy to his calm steadiness from moment to moment.

“I know sweetheart, it’s just an idea, a suggestion. I can see if you can do a trial lesson or something. The teacher seems nice, Sansa.”

 _Nice?_ Understatement of the century. His cup of tea is nice. The fact it isn’t raining is nice. Sansa Stark is… more.

“Will there be other girls there too?” Lya asked shyly, fiddling with her fingers nervously.

“Yes, maybe boys also. Sansa has a niece who goes, she said you could look out for one another,” Jon offers.

Lya likes to look after people too. She likes to take people under her wing. She has an uncanny knack for a six-year-old to be completely against anyone being taken advantage of or treated unfairly. She’s a just little loyal thing, his baby.

Her eyes widen at that, ears practically perking like a cocker-spaniel.

“Really? That might be good. Can I go daddy? Please?”

Lya doesn’t ask for much. She asks for cuddles and weak chamomile, but she doesn’t ask for things in the way children her age sometimes do. Like most dads when it comes to their daughters, he’s a sucker for doing anything that will make her happy.

“If it’s what you want, lets give it a try. Besides, I think you would be the best ballerina in all of Wintertown,” his grin matches hers, as he leans forward and affectionately bops her on the nose as he so often does.

“I’ll call Sansa and see what we can arrange.”

He doesn’t call her though. Not right away at least.

He cowardly ignores any attempts to contact the goddess-ballet-teacher until Monday morning, when at 9.02am precisely, Robb breezes into his office, slamming an expresso on the desk for both of them before unceremoniously throwing himself into a chair without word or invitation.

Jon eyes the expresso and the agonisingly smug grin Robb is wearing with equal suspicion.

“So…” Robb begins.

“So…” Jon questions, eerily wary and completely, devastatingly aware of where this is going.

“You think my sister is beautiful, huh?”

Gods. Jon snatches up the expresso ungraciously and knocks it back in one go before tossing it back on his desk. He wishes it had been whiskey.

“I don’t remember saying that exactly…”

Robb snorts at the blatant lie and rolls his eyes before taking his own expresso. He still looks far too gleeful. It’s indecent and he cannot help but really want to smack uncommonly-good-Robb-Stark right across his perfect face.

“Oh my poor, dear friend, I think what you actually said was the you thought she was _fucking_ beautiful…”

To save justifying his previous declaration or giving truth to it, despite the fact it is resoundingly true he simply ignores his friend who sits opposite with his, practically vibrating with joy at Jon’s state of turmoil.

“Gods, you’re terrible at this,” Robb laughs.

“Terrible?” Jon scoff, “I happened to tell you – YOU – Robb Stark, who I know to be certain could absolutely take me in a fight, that I think your little sister is beautiful, sorry if I’m not reacting in the most level headed way.”

“Wow. Calm the fuck down Snow,” Robb openly laughs and its infuriating how much happiness he is getting out of this, “I’m not going to give you her dowry and make you marry her. It’s 2020. You have to admit the hilarity of it all…”

“Hilarious for you, maybe…” Jon cannot help but grumble petulantly.

“Just make sure Theon doesn’t catch wind of your newfound infatuation, you’ll never hear the end of it. Although… I kind of feel like he already knows” Robb throws a wink his way, the bastard.

“I’m not infatuated!” He barks childishly, before offering some muttered expletives under his breath.

“Look,” Robb sighs, “beautiful or not, Sansa is brilliant. She had a shit time, in the end, in King Landing,” Robb rubs at his hair and he watches his friend visibly deflate before his eyes, and truthfully, he shouldn’t be surprised, because he’s seen something as he sat across from her the other night, something in her eyes that told him, like most of them, Sansa Starks story, unlike her, may not be all that beautiful, “but she’s really made something here. Her school is amazing, you should see the way she treats these kids. If Lya wants to give it try, you should definitely go for it… besides, maybe she could give you a private lesson Snow,” Robb grins wolfishly.

“Piss off.”

Jon is glad for Robb and his uncanny ability to see right through your bullshit but also know when to lighten the mood, because in all honesty, he doesn’t what to think too much about what, or more likely who broke Sansa Stark’s heart.

“Fine,” Jon sighs, offering only a quirk of the eyebrow to admit defeat, “I’ll call her. Besides, if I don’t, Lya will murder me. She’s determined to become the best ballerina in the world.”

“That’s my girl,” Robb continues to shine with what seems to be his ever-lasting grin which is in equal parts cocky and heart-warming, he ups and makes for the door like he hasn’t just tormented Jon for the last ten minutes. He knows without a shadow of a doubt that he hasn’t heard the last of his bumbled confession at the Wolf’s Head.

“Oh, and Snow,” Robb turns back as he reaches the door, leaning against the frame with his hands in his jacket pocket like he’s about to ask for the time. He should have known better, “if you break my sister’s heart, you’ll break mine too… now call her, you twat.”

So, he calls her. Demands from his daughter as his best friend are not easily ignored. It takes till Monday lunchtime for him to muster his courage, but then he finally peels the card out of his wallet, which he had safely stored there on Friday night and traces the delicate font detailing the necessities of the Northern School of Ballet and it’s Principle Mistress.

The phone rings and rings as he taps his fingers nervously on the card. He’s almost ready to give up when a breathy, tinkling voice picks up.

“The Northern School of Ballet, Miss Stark speaking, how may I help you?”

Gods, she’s just perfect.

“Sansa? Hi, it’s Jon, Jon Snow.”

“Jon!” She sounds breathless which is more than distracting, he feels his leg jumping under his desk, “how are you?”

“I’m great, are you ok? You sound…”

She laughs musically, like birdsong and he wants to smack his head on the desk. Repeatedly.

“Sorry, I was just practising a new piece I’ve been working on. Are you calling about Lya?” She sounds tentative and gentle, like she’s treading water, or talking to a horse who could bolt at any moment.

“Yes, I spoke to her over the weekend and she seemed… well she seemed excited about it. Actually, excited is probably an understatement, she’s been kind of manic since. She can be a little wild, maybe you can temper that with some of that grace you have.”

Brilliant.

“Erm… what I mean is,” he continues, because if the ship is going down, he might as well go down with it, “well, we both think it would be a good idea. She seemed happy about your niece going there. I think it would help. Extra-curriculars, new friends and all that.”

“Oh Jon, I’m so pleased! I hope she enjoys it. I hold classes for her age-group on a Tuesday and Friday, at 4.30pm, it works well with the end of school. She’s welcome to come to as many or as little as she chooses. But most parents tend to like a taster class first, to see if their child enjoy it. It also saves you shelling out for uniform and shoes and everything before they are sure.”

“I think that’s a good idea. I only want her to do things she likes,” Jon rubs his hand through his hair, “so could she come tomorrow?”

“Absolutely, could she come a little early, say four o’clock? Just so I can lend her a what she needs, leotard, ballet shoes and all that. I like everyone to wear the same, a uniform as such, then everyone feels equal and we don’t have the whole thing of children feeling left out if they don’t have the newest or best things…”

Sansa Stark is an angel, a certified angel.

Jon knows the feeling, vividly recalling what it was like to wear football boots that were a few seasons old when other kids had the newest stuff the premier stars were wearing. Jon can afford the best for Lya, but that’s not the point, and he could kiss Sansa for it.

Ok, he could kiss her for a lot of reasons, but that’s one of them.

“That sounds great,” he offers instead, “I’ll be working so I won’t drop her off, but I’ll be there to pick her up.”

“No problem, pop in at the end of class, around six o’clock, and the three of us can have a chat about what she thought, and maybe we can show you a few things she’s learnt.”

_The three of us._

“That would be amazing,” he breathes, “thanks for this Sansa, I really appreciate it.”

There’s a pause. Jon can hear the light tinkling of a piece of music in the background of wherever she is, maybe a piano. He can hear her take in a deep breath before exhaling, the noise crackling deep and long down the phone. His fingers take up his nervous tapping on her business card once more.

“Anytime Jon, seriously Jon, anytime.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lya meets Sansa for her first lesson and learns something from Meera.   
> Sansa hears from her past...

Sansa was initially shocked when Meera arrived at the studio at four o’clock on the dot on Tuesday. She masked it after just a second or so, not wanting it to show to the angel that hides shyly behind Bran’s girlfriends legs.

She’s a beauty, little Lya. She’s all Jon, from the set of her frown, pretty lips and the startling frost-grey eyes that are the exact image of the man that had startled her so much on Friday night.

“Meera!”

“Hey Sans,” she smiles easily, as she always does.

Sansa feels somewhat idiotic that she hasn’t put two and two together. She knew Meera had a new nanny position with a new family in town, she had told her in passing how well it was going and worked easily around her studies. But she could worry about that later, the little girl behind her was far more important, who was clearly feeling nervous about tonight.

Sansa crouched down in her soft, pale pink and dusty tights, black leotard and soft black skirt. Sometimes she forgoes the short skirts, soft and floaty that ends high on her thigh, they are so short that she knows they are slightly pointless, but they look nice and the girls wear them as it helps with their lines, so she’s wearing one tonight.

She peaks just around Meera’s legs, who is looking down at her with a knowing and soft look in her eyes.

“Hello there, I’m Sansa. You must be Lya…”

A little pair of grey eyes peaks out from behind Meera’s legs and nods both shyly but enthusiastically at the same time.

“Your dad told me a lot about you,” Sansa smiled gently.

“He told me about you too,” she replied, slowly coming forward to face her, and she’s so sweet, honestly as cute as a button. Despite her obvious nerves she has a steely glint in her eye that reminds her of facing down many of Arya’s determined stares over the years.

She also feels slightly flushed at Lya’s admission that Jon has told his daughter about her as well. But, of course he has, she’s going to be her ballet teacher. She could kick herself at her dramatics, sometimes she never learns.

“Do you like my uniform Lya?” She gestured gently to herself and Lya nods shyly in response.

“Would you like to see if we can find you one too before the others arrive? We could start with ballet slippers…”

After some enthusiastic jumping and pulling on poor Meera’s arm Sansa is pretty sure she is half in love with Lya Snow already.

They’ve ended up by the piano. Lya is rifling through a chest of paired slippers that Sansa keeps, searching for a size that seems just right. She’s definitely tried on the same several pairs three times, but she couldn’t stop her for all the tea in the North. Meera and Sansa stood back and let her find her feet, figuratively and literally and it’s only a few moments before Sansa’s curiosity at the arrangement is piqued and cannot resist asking.

“I knew Jon couldn’t bring her, but I just assumed her mum would drop her off…”

Meera looks to the side subtly, quirking an eyebrow.

“You don’t know, do you?” Sansa shakes her head as Meera lowers her voice to just above a whisper, “Jon and Lya’s mum aren’t together, she only sees her a few days in the month, or something like that. I’m not completely sure of the details, but no, she won’t be around I don’t think.”

Meera shrugs non-committedly. Like it doesn’t matter.

Sansa finds it matters to her. Firstly, she wonders how this affects Lya and her life. She wonders how it affects Jon’s too. He’s essentially a single parent and she knows people have been raising children alone for eternity, but she cannot help the ringing admiration that swirls in her chest.

She tries to ignore the flutter of his apparent single status. She tries. She fails.

*

Sansa gave Little Ned a quick briefing when she arrived, their hands clasped together in secrecy, calling her over to Miss Mordane at the piano and telling her she had a special mission for her. Riverbabe listened aptly as always, deep blue eyes glistening in seriousness before banding off, ribbons in her hair trailing behind her, determined to see her task through.

Ned and Lya had teamed up instantly after Ned’s polite and inquisitive introduction. Before the class had even begun Ned had taught Lya how to curtsey so she could join in with their goodbye at the end of the evening.

Sansa’s heart swelled at the sight of her riverbabe coaxing Lya to the back of the room, clearly sensitive that Lya may not want all of the attention on her for her first lesson. The other children were curious, as always at a new face amongst them and they were soon chattering together, partnering on gallops and helping her at the bar.

Lya had a steady base ability to work with. She had a good basic sense of rhythm and had naturally pretty hands and held her arms well. More importantly, she was smiling.

Sansa always gave little nicknames to all of her students, like riverbabe, kitten, minnow, waterlily, all sweet things, dainty things that remind her of how the children move or act, or something in their manner or personality that makes her want to hail them as her sparrow, fox or fire-fly. Lya is no different. She radiates happiness, with her sweet smile and her feet that just don’t seem to stay still when they are going through positions or listening to her instructions. Her little skirt flutters around her in her excitement. She flits like a little a feathery spirit in flight and she is soon christened as _hummingbird_.

She shyly takes Sansa’s praise and blushes the sweetest pink as Sansa helps to wrap her curls in a little bun at the back of her head and tells her she has picked up the positions of her feet so quickly. She’s a clever thing, the little hummingbird.

As her little dancers run to the piano come the end of the class, to give their thanks to Madame Mordane. She peaks around the corner and looks out into the foyer where several parents are milling around. She smiles on instinct where she can see Jon standing stiffly against the wall. _Gods in heaven_ , the man wears a suit like villain in a film.

She pops her head out the door and beckons him forward with her finger. He looks at her a little startled, but she puts her finger to her lips to prompt him to be quiet as he follows her into the room.

She stops just before they round the corner, halting his further progress by putting her hand on his forearm and smiles shyly at him as he whips his head in her direction. She gestures to the room and knows he can see the class in the mirror, but with their attention turned towards the piano, they won’t be able to see him. It’s perfect for his incognito viewing of little Lya.

“Stay here… just watch,” she whispers before slipping back into the room. He looks shocked and a little bit terrified. She knows it can be just as overwhelming for the parents, its all new to them too so she always makes an effort for them to see a little bit of the class when their children first start, it always gives them a real kick.

Sansa makes her way back into the room and stands in the empty space reserved for her to give her own curtsey.

“Ok, girls, let’s say thank you to Madame Mordane, and let us all think about our arms, I want to see lovely hands, not witches fingers,” Sansa risks a glance at Jon, who is so focused on Lya who is giggling next to Ned and trying to copy her arms.

Sansa takes her steps into a curtsey so Lya can mirror her if she wants to before the girls curtsey deeply, and she is more than pleased with the dainty hold of their fingers.

“Merci beaucoup Madame Mordane. Merci beaucoup Miss Sansa,” her little class choruses perfectly and she cannot help but beam at them.

“Simply beautiful girls, merci. I will see you on Friday.”

Sansa watches out of the corner of her eye as Lya flits to Jon as he bends to scoop her into his arms, sinfully delectable arms she might add, and it makes her chest just feel _so – bloody – warm_ at the picture he paints. She shoves it to the back of her mind as Ned runs to her, side-stepping the other dancers to sit at her favourite auntie’s feet so she can begin their ritual of unlacing her ribbons.

“Not tonight, riverbabe, I’ve got to stay for a little bit, tell mummy I’ll call her later, I’ll see you Friday, and then I promise we will spend some time together at grandma’s on Saturday,” she crouches down to pick Ned up briefly, peppering kisses to her cheeks as she giggles in her arms, “I love you sweet one.”

“I love you too, Auntie Sansa,” she places her precious cargo on the floor gently and accepts a final embrace of her legs, looking up to meet Jon’s eyes, warm and grey like coal cooling in the grate. Sansa lets little Ned scamper off to find Arya in the throng of parents in the lobby, hopeful her sister will get the message that she is busy. She doesn’t want her lingering gazes and questions that will undoubtably surface, because Arya has that uncanny ability to just _know_ things. She was the first to know something was wrong in Kings Landing, without even having to speak to Sansa, she was the first to tip off Robb, and she just isn’t ready for that kind of examination.

She kind of just wants Jon and Lya to herself too.

Jon comes up in front of her, Lya still in his arms as she whispers sweetly in his ear before waving to her riverbabe as she meanders out the studio.

“Is that your niece?” Jon starts, and its nice, neither of them have offered so much in the way of a greeting in the last five minutes since she beckoned him into the room with the cock of a finger. It’s like how she and Theon would converse. It’s easy and warm and so right.

The mention of her niece, as always, makes her glow.

“Yes, my sisters’ little girl.”

“You’re really good with them, the kids I mean,” he says softly as the room empties and quiets around them.

“Well it’s easy, when they are as special as this little one,” she grins, turning her attention to Lya who is burrowing shyly into Jon’s shoulder.

“Thank you, Miss Sansa,” she mutters softly.

“She said she had a great time tonight, didn’t you Lya?” Jon turns to his daughter and bops her on the nose with his index finger and Sansa doesn’t know if she should laugh or cry.

Her papa does exactly the same. He only does it to her too, no one else. It’s their thing, always has been, since she was smaller than Lya, and he’ll still do it now, when she’s happy or sad. It’s a Ned Stark thing.

“I did, I have a new friend too, called Ned,” Lya nods, a little more enthusiastically now.

“And you did such a good job too, Lya,” Sansa ducks her head so she can meet her eye, “do you want to show daddy some of the things you learnt today?”

Lya nodded again and was already wiggling in Jon’s eyes. He laughed affectionately at her and set her on the ground.

“To the bar, Lya,” Sansa prompted her and followed her over, “lets go through some of our positions,” Sansa spoke to Lya and gestured for Jon to take a seat along the mirror in front of them, he grinned at her, a low, easy smile lifting one side of his mouth and she felt her cheeks flushing under his gaze. She cleared her throat as she placed her hand on the bar facing Lya so she could mirror her actions if she wanted to.

“First position, feet and port de bras… lovely, well done Lya,” Sansa murmured, leaning to correct her arms just slightly, she cocked a finger under Lya’s chin and raised her head up, “that’s better, those eyes are far too pretty to be looking at the floor,” Sansa took her position back in front of her, “and demi-plie… arms like a butterfly… good girl,” Sansa repeated the plie so Lya could continue, before moving her feet into second position and continuing.

Lya was wonderful. She could tell from the steady set of her brow and the way she was poking her tongue out that she was concentrating as hard as she could, eager to do well. Sansa chanced a glance over at Jon, he sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed and a hand rubbing over his stubbled chin, hiding his mouth, but she could tell from his eyes that he was smiling as he looked at his daughter. She would know, Ned Stark had looked at her like that all her life.

*

“She did wonderfully, Jon, really… if she enjoyed it…”

“I know she enjoyed it, Sansa, I can tell. She hasn’t looked so happy in a little while,” he murmured, eyes trained across the studio to where Lya was lacing her trainers, “she looked brilliant too, I didn’t expect… well, she just seemed happy…”

“Jon,” she sighed, “moving can be hard, she’s a versatile little thing, she will be ok, things just take time, and if she truly did enjoy it, she is welcome back anytime. Her and my niece seemed to get on really well, maybe they could get together a bit more, I can speak to my sister and brother-in-law, but take the time to let her think on it.”

She seemed to have lost his attention, she had paused to let him speak only to be met with silence as he stared off over her shoulder, his gaze curious and brow furrowed.

“Jon,” she prompted, waving a hand in his face.

“Sorry,” he murmured, blinking a few times, “that poster, is that you?”

She followed his gaze although she knew what he was speaking of immediately. The walls in her studio, painted in soft-white were bare at large, except for several framed prints she had indulged in, a nod to her ego, posters made to advertise some of her performances at the Royal Ballet over the years, none of the romances of course, she didn’t need that reminder, but the one Jon was staring at was for the Weirwood Queen. It had been one of her favourites, the only northern ballet ever to grace the stage, with her in the role of the Queen of the North. It had been her first outing as prima.

She could still picture Ned’s Starks tear tracked cheeks as he stood in the front row, his arms wrapped around her mother as they watched on when she received her ovation.

“Yes,” she breathed, simply, vacantly, as she let the memories flood her, “it was a long time ago,” she shrugged.

He was looking at her like she was insane, or he was, she wasn’t entirely sure, like she was something fragile and breakable, or altogether too dangerous to be close to.

“You were… the Royal Ballet?” He gestured between her and the poster.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” It was a surprise to her that he didn’t know. Robb had always been her biggest cheerleader, “I was with the company for nearly ten years… like I said, it seems like a long time ago now…” Sansa trailed off again, looking to Jon who appeared utterly engrossed in the poster. It was a nice one, she supposed, one of the least traditional ballets from the score and the chorography down to her costume. In the poster she wore a bone coloured leotard, to match the bark of a wierwood tree, with a blood red skirt that only covered the back of her, like the train of a wedding dress made of the gauziest fabric, she fondly remembered it as being far too long and the most difficult thing she had ever danced in. Her hair was much as it was now, braided and pinned back in a knotted bun, but the iron-wrought crown on her head, that was really something, she thinks her mum still has it somewhere…

Jon looked like he wanted to say something, his eyes flitting just like his daughters were prone to between her and the image of her mid-air in a firebird leap, head flung back and skirt billowing behind her, but she didn’t want to explain, she didn’t want to have to justify her school and why one of the best dancers to grace the boards of Kings Landing has left it all. She certainly didn’t want to have explain _who_ exactly had made Sansa turn tail and upend her life to Jon, of all people.

“A long time ago,” she hummed under her breath.

“Sansa…”

Her phone starting ringing, vibrating across the small table aside the piano.

“Sorry Jon, I should get that…”

“No, of course, fine, we can see ourselves out, I’ll talk to Lya later about what she thinks…”

Sansa had grabbed her phone, supressing a sigh as she eyed the contact flashing on the screen with its Kings Landing area code. She mouthed a _thank you_ to Jon as he called Lya over and made their way to the door.

She waited for the door to close behind them before taking a deep breath and accepting the call.

“Hello?”

“Sansa, good evening, it is good to hear from you.”

Time it appears, rarely changes anyone.

“Well, you are nothing but persistent, so I thought I would put you out of your misery,” she smiled despite better intentions, sliding down the length of the mirror and sitting on the floor.

“It has only taken a few months…” the voice was as it always was, warm and rumbling, like waves washing over a pebbled shore.

“At first I didn’t think I would ever hear from you again,” she sighed.

“I wanted to give you space. I waited six months, but I was worried for you, you know I cared a great deal for you, I still do.”

She paused for a moment, pulling the knots on the ribbons wrapped around her legs with her free hand and letting them fall away.

“I know you did, I just didn’t know you still do… besides, you know my reasons, you know well what caused you to be so worried about me,” she supressed the eye-roll, it wouldn’t be abided if they were face to face.

“More than you can ever know, my dear,” the sigh on the other line sounded tired, much like her.

The comfortable silence they had always shared together stretched between them, like no time has passed between them at all, like the tears hadn’t been cried and the angry worlds hadn’t been hurled, but not between them, never them.

“How is…” she paused, wincing, wishing she hadn’t begun.

The chuckle at the end of the line had her craning and stretching her neck, rolling her shoulders. It was comfortable, and homely, one of the only homely things she had found in a place that had never been such.

“You can ask…”

“No. I don’t want to. I shouldn’t have said anything, and I don’t want to know.” She said, kicking of her shoes in frustration.

“Ah, there she is, I thought we had lost that little wolf for good to the South.”

“Never. Just like I never belonged in the South.”

“Maybe you did, my dear. I certainly thought so. Just because one fool of an individual didn’t believe the same, it doesn’t make it truth. You shouldn’t concern yourself. Even if you no longer care, and I’m not entirely sure that is the case, just know I will never forgive him.”

“The only thing I care about is that he never believed I was worth it.”

That was the crux of it. A year had passed to thaw her broken heart. She didn’t miss him, not at all. The way she was handled, so carelessly discarded, like nothing more than a broken Northern wild thing, that was what still stung. That was what made her blood run hot with the unrighteousness of it all.

“You are everything, Sansa Stark, never forget that. Your new success it proof enough of that. I have been following you aptly.”

“I won’t forget, I promise you. Your advice always meant a lot to me, and I know that you always cared for me.”

“With all my heart. Now, it’s getting late, run along, break some hearts and pointe shoes…”

She laughed, suddenly glad she had taken the call. She couldn’t run from her past forever and she had cared for the people she had come to know and admire south of the Neck, there were not many of them, but there were a select few.

“You know me too well…”

“Would you like me to pass on a message Sansa, or anything?”

“No, no thank you. I appreciate, really I do, but… he’s not worth my words.”

A rumbling, breathy laugh filled the line, followed by a huff at her gall, but she couldn’t care less, and she knew deep down they didn’t care either.

“That’s my girl…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My, my - yes Jon, Sansa is the ballerina of dreams.
> 
> My, my - Lya has got to be the cutest. 
> 
> My, my - who on earth was that calling?


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon's education into all things ballet and Sansa continues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for the slight delay to our scheduled programming. I went on a little trip to Scotland and our return was delayed by the flightly mistress of Storm Ciara... I see you babe, you windy vixen. 
> 
> Here is Jon's reflection on the last chapter and some more Robb and Theon being... well, Robb and Theon.

Jon was fucked.

Royally so. He was so utterly and completely fucked.

Lya had loved her first ballet lesson. Like a little bird she had crooned lyrically, the whole car journey home on Tuesday evening, about how much she liked little Ned, how Ned was her new best friend, how she wanted to be a ballerina, just like Sansa, and how perfect and lovely Miss Sansa had been to her.

He had always known his daughter was a genius with the taste to match.

Jon had been distracted to a fault at the sight of Sansa in her studio when he had arrivbed to pick Lya up, in her tights and leotard, and that ridiculous scrap of a skirt, she was essentially wearing a second skin which left very little to the imagination. He hadn’t realised he could be turned on by a neck and a collarbone, but evidently, he could.

Then he’d watched Lya, his darling little love, standing with the other girls, looking so adorable he wanted to scream into a dark room at the thought of his little girl growing up before his very eyes as she curtseyed with her new friends.

Sansa was good with her. _So good._ He had that familiar pang in his chest when he had watched them at the bar together, the sight he often got when he saw a daughter with a mother, doing something he had never thought to do with Lya before. Sansa looked at his daughter like she was a jewel, telling her all the things he knew to be true, that his daughter was _lovely_ and _good_ and had eyes that should be seen by the word.

Sansa was much like uncommonly-good-Robb-Stark in that regard.

Then Jon had spotted that poster of her. He’s been in her company a mere two times and wouldn’t be able to miss her beacon of copper hair for anything, whether it was in print or the flesh. _Gods the flesh._ She was a beauty, a broke the mould beauty and he was totally gone. Jon had a bit of chat, a flux of banter that would rear it’s sexed head every once in while, he wasn’t totally useless with women and he garnered a lot of attention from the opposite sex, he was just busy, concentrating on his daughter, but he seemed rendered simple in Sansa’s presence, let alone watching her dance in essentially no clothes at all. He was almost inherently grateful for her phone ringing at that moment, so he had an excuse to escape with Lya to somewhere that didn’t involve him having to look at her gliding through the air like a ruby-clad nymph sent to bring him to his knees.

So not only was Jon gone on the sister of his best friend, she was also now his daughters beloved ballet teacher. He could smell the disaster from here. He hadn’t seen Lya this happy in the time since they had moved to Wintertown and he wouldn’t screw with the dynamic now, not when she was opening up again, smiling, blooming like a winter rose in her way that was so unique to her.

Meera had taken her back to ballet on Friday, for the second of her weekly classes, signing her up for the term and arranging with Sansa to have her kitted out with all kinds of ballet paraphernalia that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

Robb has demanded they make Friday’s their weekly get together, some sort of pub jaunt or movie night, even going as far as to make the arrangements with Meera. He was glad for it, firstly for the company. It has been so good for him, reaching out and clicking back with Robb like old times, but secondly, he liked that it afforded him the chance to avoid Sansa from pick-up at ballet.

So, come Friday, he begrudgingly found himself nursing a pint again in the Wolf’s Head, sitting opposite Theon and Robb, who looked equally as smug as the next. It was bloody infuriating.

“Somethings wrong with Snow,” Theon said, in his sagest and knowing voice, leaning sideways to Robb for extra emphasis you offered a solemn nod of his head, which Jon wanted to resolutely knock from his noble head.

“I concur, what do you think it is?”

“He does look rather sullen, although he does look divinely gorgeous when he broods, shame I’m not his type,” Theon sighed.

“No, you’re not, I’m afraid. I have a feeling who might be,” Robb nodded again, his new irritating habit rendering him to an awfully uncanny representation of a dash-board dog.

Jon offered a simple eye-roll before lifting his pint glass and taking a hearty measure before setting it down, determined to continue ignoring them until they said anything of use. He was pissed at both of them, truth be told.

“Is it Lya?” Theon asked, “finally realised what a drama queen she has for a father?”

“Where is Lya tonight, Jon?” Robb asked, eyebrow quirked.

“You fucking know where she is Stark,” Jon grumbled.

“Ah yes, at the Northern School of Ballet, which, is incidentally owned by my beautiful sister.”

Jon cracked his neck, levelling them both with a sarcastic look, feigning as much disinterest whilst of course being absolutely interested as he braved himself to address the elephant that has been parading in his head since Tuesday.

“You didn’t tell me that she was some sort of ballerina…” he mumbled.

“Some sort of ballerina?” Theon scoffed, “the disrespect.”

“Look Snow,” Robb flicked his wrist in an absent minded fashion, “it really isn’t my fault that you are the biggest heathen this far south of the Wall in a thousand years, it’s not my fault you are so utterly clueless.”

“And she isn’t some sort of ballerina, she is _the_ ballerina. World famous Sansa Stark, youngest prima ballerina in the history of the Royal Ballet,” Theon nodded, eyes obviously aglow with pride.

“Shit,” Jon mumbled.

“Shit indeed, my friend, not only has he gone and lost his head to your sister,” Theon nudged Robb in the ribs, “who happens to be the most beautiful creature ever created by the gods, but also so far out of your league she is in another galaxy…”

He could sit there and deny the snide comment about losing his head, but at this point it would just be a colossal waste of his time.

“How do you know anyway?” Robb questioned him, with just a hint of suspicion in his tone.

“I bet he googled her…” Theon offered, rather unhelpfully, not that he hadn’t considered it.

“No, I fucking didn’t, you pervert,” Jon huffed a frustrated breath, “I was picking Lya up on Tuesday, I saw a poster…”

“Oh, which one? Theon leaned forward excitedly.

Jon scrunched his nose and pulled his eyebrows together. He really was a sullen and brooding twat.

“I don’t know, she was wearing this red skirt,” he looked up, knowing he looked more than a little wistful, “and her legs were in the air.”

“I bet they were,” Theon scoffed.

“Watch it,” Robb grumbled with little bite, “that’s the Weirwood Queen, that’s my dads’ favourite, mine too. She was amazing.”

“So, she is the real thing then, ballet wise?” Jon asked still in confusion.

“Yeh, the absolute best…” Jon could hear the sincerity in his voice, the pride swelling in his river-deep eyes as he glanced at Jon, obviously noting his befuddled frown, “don’t ask Jon, she was the best, she still is, but she came home, that’s all that matters, not the why’s…” he sighed deeply, chest rising and falling as Robb glared at the table for a beat, “Fuck it, I need another drink, my round,” he muttered, dragging himself to his feet and making his way to the bar.

Theon leaned over and smacked Jon affectionately on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it mate. It isn’t you, he’s just sensitive about Sansa and what happened last year. He’s still pissed about it,” he offered, pulling at his hair trying to mask his own frustration.

“What happened?” Jon asked.

“Look… it’s not for me to tell. I don’t even know the half of it and Sans is my best friend… I know I take the piss and give her hell, but I would open my veins for her. She’s everything to me, and Robb too, obviously. All the same it’s her story to tell…” Theon appraised him, brow furrowed, “you really have no idea, about how good she is, do you?” Theon sighed, “Fuck, don’t tell Robb I showed you this…” he picked his phone up off the table and tapped on the screen before sliding it over to him and looking over his shoulder, checking the Robb was still at the bar.

Jon picked it up, eyeing the video on the screen Theon had pulled up on YouTube. It was called _the bedroom scene from The Dragonknight_.

The video played as Theon nodded at him, gesturing back to the screen as Sansa’s image filled Theon’s phone. He knew the story of Aemon the Dragonknight, everyone did. Sansa must have been Naery’s. He also wasn’t idiot enough to imagine what a bedroom scene in ballet terms meant.

Gods.

She was fucking mesmerising. She moved like water, like the smoky pink dress she wore, dancing around her waist and hips and her Aemon lifted her like she was feather-light. She was gorgeous, and he couldn’t take his eyes from her, spinning on her toes like it was nothing, like she didn’t even have to think about it. She looked at the man on the stage with her like he was the world and it made him ache.

What would it by like to have his hands around her waist? Could she trust him with her body like that?

He couldn’t take his eyes from her as she moved, her legs as she held one above her head as she was spun on the other, from her back as it arched against her Aemon, from her hair fanning around her like fire, nor from her smile, sensual and coy as her body caressed her partners like a whisper, like she was desperate for his touch.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

“Yep, that you are my friend, that you are,” Theon grinned, only looking partly sorry.

*

Jon had settled himself in bed after thanking Meera and seeing her to her car. His night, although initially fun had ended with him feeling utterly exhausted at Theon’s knowing teasing and resolutely ignoring Robb’s gaze in fear he unearthed the reality that he had just watched Sansa seduce a man through dance. Robb had packed him off with an invitation to Sunday lunch at Ned and Cat’s, in which attendance was absolutely mandatory, as Little Ned was expecting to play with Lya.

Speaking of, Jon had been in bed for minutes before Lya crept into his room, trying to sneak under the covers.

“I see you there, little one,” he laughed at her failed stealthy cat crawl into his room.

“Oh, hi daddy, I was just checking you got home safely,” she whispered, sounding tired and as he liked to call it, mushy.

“Is that so? Do you want a cuddle sweetheart?” Jon asked, holding his arms open.

“Yes please, daddy,” she said quietly, although through the darkness he could tell she was smiling at her easily won victory at not being sent back to her own room. She snuggled into him in her cotton pyjamas and he folded his arms around her, kissing her head and smoothing back her charcoal curls.

“Did you have a good time at ballet tonight?” he asked, twirling a loose curl around his index finger.

“It was so good, daddy,” she sighed. “I told Miss Sansa I wanted to be a proper ballerina, just like her, so she showed us how she can spin on her toes. She calls it a pirouette, but said we mustn’t do it until we are more grown up…”

“That’s nice baby, it sounds fun,” he yawned into her hair.

Lya copied a yawn in response, burrowing into his chest and speaking into his t-shirt, already sounding half asleep.

“Daddy, she looked like an angel, a real-life angel.”

Jon was fucked.

Royally so. He was so utterly and completely fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone loves a good 'bedroom scene' in a ballet.   
> Just me? Anyhow… Stark Sunday Luncheon next.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sunday at Winterfell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of Stark wholesomeness ahead. I've battened down the hatches and am settled in front of the fire with a glass of wine as Storm Dennis rages outside, so there may be a few updates on their way to you soon, dear hearts. 
> 
> Feel free to fill your boots with imagines of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish rugby teams for this chapter, IT'S ALL FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES. IT'S FOR MY ART. 
> 
> Enjoy, happy Saturday.

Sansa loathes few things in this world. Lateness is one of them. Hence her current state of disarray, because she is in fact late for Sunday Lunch at her parent’s house. Attendance is mandatory, failure to attend would result in Catelyn Stark herself coming to seek you out, and Tully she may be, but her mother has the nose of a wolf, there is no hiding from her.

She doesn’t normally open the studio on a Sunday, but she did today. Her Grade 6 class have just gone en pointe, which brings the elation, excitement and extra work that goes hand to hand with such a step. Sansa sees it as a privilege and responsibility to do things right, which means extra classes, one to one lessons, and the dreaded _breaking in period_. Hence her lateness. A few tears, a tumble or two and no doubt many, many, blisters tomorrow, has found Sansa running up her parents driveway, her hair spilling from the knot at the nape of her neck, slightly sweaty, and with a Wintertown rugby jumper that she definitely stole from Robb around 5 years ago hastily thrown over her tights and leotard, with her bag containing a change of clothes in one hand and the dessert she always brings balanced in a box in the other.

She’s flustered. Sansa Stark really loathes both lateness and being flustered.

Sansa forgoes shouting out a greeting like her wild siblings would as she hustles her way through the ancient door of her childhood home, adorned with stained-glass Weirwood leaves and a wolf head knocker.

“Auntie Sansa!”

“Miss Sansa!”

She winces, briefly anticipating the impact of her niece and Lya Snow as they collide around her legs, stifling a laugh just about as they begin to harp and chatter like sparrows as her meringue filled box teeters dangerously in her hand.

“A little help here!” She calls out, praising the old gods as a set of legs appear around the corner.

“Bran, thank goodness, take this for me please,” she begs, offering the proffered box towards her brother.

“Hello to you too, sister dearest,” he drawls sarcastically as he wheels his chair in her direction before ultimately taking pity on her as he quirks his lip in a way that makes her think of their father as he observes the gaggle of girls wrapping themselves around her legs.

“Hello, brother angel,” she smiles.

“There better be sticky toffee pudding in here,” he gestures to the box now safely stowed on his lap.

“Winter berry Pavlova with dark chocolate, I’m afraid,” she smiles at his mocked outrage, “fridge please, before the cream melts… now let me say hello to these wild creatures,” she smiles, fluffing their hair as she crouches down to offer a group hug to Lya and little Ned.

“How are my girls? I didn’t know Lya was coming over today, aren’t we the luckiest my riverbabe?”

“So lucky, auntie, we’ve been playing and dancing and showing grandpapa our twirls, he said we looked like snowflakes,” she exclaimed happily, clapping her hands together as Lya nodded like it was the wisest thing she had even heard.

“Amazing, well done for practicing, my snowflakes, do you want to come with me whilst I say hello to everyone?” Sansa paused to take in their happy chatter and agreement to her plan, “good girls, ok, hop on a grab a hip,” she smiled, scooping up a little girl on each side of her, nestled against each hip as their legs tangle around her small waist. Sansa supressed the _oomph_ that was threatening her aching limbs as she made for the kitchen, where her family would no doubt be whilst the girls continued telling her all about the snowflake dance that they had been crafting.

“…that’s wonderful, just wonderful Lya,” she praised as they round the corner to enter her mothers pride and joy, the large stone walled kitchen that lay in the centre of the ancient home, “and did your daddy drop you over to play this afternoon?”

“No, he’s right here Sans,” Robb’s voice quipped from where he sat at the island, glass of red wine in his hand, sat next to the one and only delectable form of Jon Snow.

Sansa thankfully managed to withhold the _eep_ that wanted to burst from her lips at bumbling into the kitchen wrapped in an eight-limbed six-year-old monster, hair dishevelled and in nothing but tights and one of Robb’s old rugby shirts. Brilliant. Someone kill her, preferably quickly.

“Jon,” she offered, swallowing as she gathered herself, “Robb, hi.”

“Hi Sansa,” Jon offered one of his lop-sided grins. How she knew this was one of _his_ grins was not currently up for debate.

“Sweet sister, what a dream, with my sweet niece and our sweet Lya, don’t you all make the pretty picture?” Robb rose from his chair, offering Sansa a kiss on each check before tickling Lya and little Ned’s sides, causing Sansa to let them slide out of her arms and run away in a shriek of giggles and cries.

“Oh hush, Robb,” she scolded as Arya flitted into the kitchen being trailed by a flustered looking Gendry each with a six-year-old on his shoulders.

“Wow, Sans, you look like you’ve had a tumble with a scrum-half, you lucky thing,” she joked, walking past and tugging on the tattered rugby shirt she was wearing.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she batted her hand away, “besides, you know I always preferred a fly-half,” she said as haughtily as she could.

Jon started coughing on his wine, dragging a broad palm over his face as Robb barked a laugh and nudged him in the ribs.

“What position did you play at Uni Jon, I forget?”

“Fly-half,” he sighed, scrunching his face and staring determinedly at a spot on the oak topped kitchen island.

Gods above, the list of qualities demonstrating Jon Snow’s wonderfulness was really starting to grate on her, especially because she wasn’t interested in her pupils’ parent and father’s employee and brothers long lost friend. Absolutely not, never. No thank you.

So, sweaty and dishevelled and now half groaning over the perfect father/rugby dreamboat in the middle of her mother’s kitchen, it’s safe to say she isn’t going to cool her heated cheeks anytime soon. well, she has embarrassed herself enough already so she might as well go out in a blaze of glory.

She leaned against the island, her hip bumping against the worn stone and oak top and let her gaze run slowly up and down him.

“I can tell,” she said sweetly. She could see Robb smirking out the corner of her eye, but she ignored him and continued to hold Jon’s gaze as he quirked his lips just slightly. She could feel her cheeks flush under his watch and dropped her eyes first, save her blushing rendered her face completely red.

“Anyway… I better have a shower before mum sees me looking like this,” she addressed the room and ignored the tension thrumming around her.

“Yes, you better, Sansa sweats just like the rest of us, oh the shame!” Arya heckled, throwing a hand over her brow, “and a ballerina at that, what will Catelyn Stark say?”

“Where are mum and dad anyway?” She asked, ignoring Arya and her continued swooning against Gendry.

“In the loft, mum dragged them up there to try and find some of your old dolls for the girls,” Robb said.

“Oh gods, are you all hell bent on embarrassing me today?” She grumbled to herself.

Robb sighed rather sympathetically, because if the eldest Stark siblings knew anything, it was the embarrassment one’s parents could inflict when rattled.

“You just wait Sans, I’ve already had two comments wondering about when I am going to settle down and _oh Ned, isn’t it so nice to see Jon with his little girl_ …”

Honestly, Sansa couldn’t disagree with their mother, it was rather nice to see Jon.

*

Sansa renters the kitchen and dodges Lya and little Ned, who have decided that the doorway is an excellent place to sit and play with one another’s hair, she can’t say she minds, for how much the sight makes her smile. She’s feeling slightly more normal now, in her skinny jeans and fitted black roll-neck. She used to dress smartly every day in Kings Landing, but now happily dons her Northern home comforts, forgoing haute couture for jumpers and jeans and a braid of copper hair dancing down her back, still damp from the shower.

“Hi mum,” she greets, kissing her on the cheek from behind, where she stands at the range cooker, diligently stirring her famous home-made gravy, which she knows for sure has more red wine that actual stock in it. Her mother also has the tell-tale Tully flush to her cheeks which signals she has already begun sampling said wine, Catelyn Stark is a good sailor.

“Oh Sansa, there you are, thank you for the dessert, see to the drinks, would you?” Sansa smiles warmly at her lack of a proper greeting from her mother, who is far too busy seeing to everything being _just so_. She has enjoyed helping her mum with Sunday Lunch since she has come home, it’s another aspect of her life that she has slotted back in to with ease.

“Of course,” Sansa spins on her heel, collecting a half-opened bottle of red from the island and pouring herself a glass, eyeing the label with a rueful grin, _pinot noir_ , how interesting. She remembers with a grin how she once likened Jon to a good glass of pinot noir as she tops the glasses up around the island, ignoring Robb as he pinches her side and offering only a quirk of the brow as Jon’s whispered _thank you_ in that sinfully husky voice of his. She bites down on her lip to stop her own hysteria when she briefly imagines if pinot noir would taste just as nice from Jon’s lips. Goodness, she needs to get out more.

“Primrose,” her father calls to her in his low and single toned voice, as he artfully manoeuvres Lya and little Ned, his arms occupied with dolls that haven’t seen the light of day since Sansa become much more occupied by ballet slippers. He only looks mildly flustered at being abandoned in the loft to dust them off whilst his wife found more enjoyable pursuits in the kitchen.

The girls took mere moments to spot the bounty in his arms and are soon running in and out of his legs in glee. She hears a brief plea for Lya to calm down from Jon but the sight of her father trying to maintain his usual stoic calmness is just too hilarious and Sansa, Robb and Jon are soon in hysterics. Seeing Jon Snow laughing is rather lovely.

“Here, have them, you little madams,” he says half-heartedly, without a hint of heat in his tone as he deposits the dolls into their waiting clutches and the greedy mittens of Lya and little Ned swoop them up like they are the sweetest treat.

“My primrose,” he greets her again, ignoring the teasing from his audience as he kisses her on each cheek before she nestles her head on his sturdy shoulder, “I heard you’ve already met Jon…”

“Yes papa,” she offers Jon a smile as he warmly appraises her and her father, with that odd look he always seems to possess, like frosted grey snow glinting in the sunlight, “Lya has been coming to some classes with little Ned,” she answers her father without removing her gaze from Jon.

Her father bops her on the nose, as is his way, and the action that is so normal from Ned Stark reminds her of seeing Jon do exactly the same thing to his daughter in her studio just a few nights previous, she wonders if Jon is thinking of the connection, of seeing his little ritual with Lya reflected before her eyes, and she imagines he does if the heated look he is giving her is anything to go by, despite the frown pulling at his brows.

“Oh that’s lovely primrose, its so nice to see the girls playing,” he gazes wistfully to the doorway, where an inconveniently placed tea-party appears to have been commenced, in which it seems Catelyn Stark has given them the third best china to play with. She wonders if her father sees her and Arya when he takes in the scene, just with less hair pulling and threats of violence.

“She’s a credit to you Jon, your Lya…” her father burrs, “she seems a lovely girl.”

But its Sansa who answers before Jon gets the chance.

“Yes papa, she is,” Sansa begins, “she’s absolutely perfect.”

*

Lya has embrassed the Stark family madness with the grace and ease she took to ballet. Jon only looks mildly petrified at the chaos around him as everyone flits in and out of the kitchen as her mother tries to wrangle everyone to the table in the dining room.

Sansa adores it. She looks fondly as Gendry throws both Arya and little Ned each over a shoulder and Robb carries Lya on his shoulders. Bran, Meera and Rickon have already settled at the table, because they are no fools, and know they will get the best servings as Ned carves the leg of lamb on the ancient Weirwood table.

“Sansa, will you grab the other dishes for me,” Catelyn calls over her shoulder not waiting for an answer. Sansa only smiles as the kitchen slowly clears and the calming din descends that only a dinnertime can cause. She finishes her glass of wine knowing Robb will be wasting no time in playing sommelier in the dining room. He always pours their mother a glass first, then Sansa, the sweet fool.

“Let me help,” Jon speaks warmly from beside her, and his sudden close proximity startles her from her warbled and affectionate thoughts about her wild siblings.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, and she just wish he wouldn’t keep speaking to her in that smooth way, like hot caramel, his voice is warm and just slightly more Northern than Robb and her father’s. It reminds her of a time gone by, he speaks how she images they did in another life, when Kings and Queens battled for a throne and winters lasted a decade at a time.

She merely hums in reply because she doesn’t trust her voice right now, she doesn’t trust that her voice wont betray that she is just finding him _too much_ , with his perfect voice and perfect daughter and the disbelief that she hasn’t been this physically affected by someone since before her life in Kings Landing fell apart.

She’s a little bit damaged from having her heart so carelessly broken by someone so undeserving in the past, it’s taken her a year to come to this understanding, but _he_ was so wholly undeserving of how much of her soul she was willing to give, and she knows she wears the wounds of her past a little too literally at times but its hard to remain so guarded with Jon. She wants him. Its that simple.

“Hmm,” she hums again when he offers no reply and she turns to face him as he goes to move around her and the island that blocks their path to the plates bursting with roast potatoes and honey glazed parsnips. As she moves left so does he. Like the fluttering wings of a butterfly, when she goes right to get out of his way, he mirrors her as she blushes and shyly laughs at their awkward dance to pass one another.

He huffs out a breath and she feels it tickle her face, tendrils of her copper hair rippling around her rosy cheeks and he is _just-so-close_. She barely has a moment to register what is happing as his hands graze up each or her hips before settling, firm and warm on her waist against the smooth material of her roll-neck, before he lifts her into the air. Sansa grabs at his shoulders for purchase as she sucks in a breath as the sudden movement and he turns them slowly, so he now stands where she just stood, before slowly bringing her down against his chest so she settles on the floor.

Sansa has partnered some of the finest danseurs to ever grace the stage, she is used to being lifted around like it is the easiest thing in the world, no matter the complexity, yet Jon’s simple lift and twist has rendered her legs useless, as she inhales deeply his woodsy scent of trees and air and rain and smells she should even recognise and steadies her legs like a skittish fawn before slowly removing her hands from his shoulders and clearing her throat.

All the while, he hasn’t taken his eyes off hers.

Her gentle cough breaks his hazy gaze, blinking rapidly a few times before taking a small step back as he quirks his lip in the way that she has come to associate with Jon Snow, before turning around, grabbing a plate and making his way out of the kitchen without sparing her a backward glance.

*

When Sansa has eventually followed Jon into the dining room, nursing the gravy-boat in her hands like its tethering her to the earth, she surprised that no one offers a teasing remark about their delay, but as Robb throws her a wink as he passes her a new glass of wine, she suspects he has something to do about it and that is worth pondering when her brain is working again.

She knows she’s still blushing, her egg-shell complexion has always been traitorous to displaying her moods, yet Jon looks wholly unaffected from the charged tango they just shared in the kitchen which she finds more annoying that she should. Maybe he’s just like that with people. Maybe he is just free with his looks and his touches.

She’s sat between Lya and Gendry and she’s thankful for the easy company, yet her reprieve is short lived with Jon sitting opposite her.

Lya is eyeing Sansa’s plate which is filled with a lamb and mostly vegetables with the same suspicion that Arya once had, before she became accustomed to Sansa’s diet as a ballerina in the prime of her career. She doesn’t technically have to follow the same regime now, but old habits die hard, and really, she just likes thriving on all things green and high in protein.

“Is that what Ned and I should eat if we want to be a ballerina like you, Miss Sansa?” Lya asked, looking lovingly at the whole roast potato speared onto her little fork.

“Just call me Sansa when we aren’t at your lesson, and no,” she shakes her head adamantly, “you should eat what you like.”

“Really?”

“I’m positive. My number one rule for ballerina’s at my school is to be happy, that’s all you and little Ned should focus on _hummingbird_ ,” she puts her cutlery down to twirl a lock of Lya’s hair around her finger.

She meets Jon’s stare opposite her, and he’s looking at her with a half confused, half reverent gaze and she wonders if she’s overstepped with giving his daughter her own little nickname.

“ _Hummingbird_ ,” he whispers, almost to himself, “…it suits her.”

Yes, she agrees in her head. It really does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ned's nickname for Sansa is inspired from English Primroses, which are my favourite winter flower, with it's pale a buttery petals that are almost, just, nearly, yellow that thrives in the early months of the English year just represents our Sansa so well. She is our primrose. 
> 
> Next up, more from Jon and Lya.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's half-term in the North. Jon spends some time with his daughter and catches up with Ygritte.   
> Jon and Lya have some unexpectedly expected companions on a trip to the cinema!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear hearts.   
> There is a fair bit to unpack here.   
> Remember, Ygritte is not a villain here, she just does not fit the societal norm of a maternal figure *offers non-committal shrug* - make your own judgements. 
> 
> Half-term: Had a question from someone about what this means. In the UK it's part of the school holiday system. You have 6 weeks holiday in the summer, and two weeks holiday in December and Easter and then the odd week long break which we call half-term. 
> 
> Someone also asked about paid holidays from work, like, yeh. Doesn't everyone get this? At least four weeks? No, that's poppycock. 
> 
> I appreciate the above is likely the most boring thing I've ever typed. Never mind.

Things have been going smoothly for Jon in the last few weeks, time seems to be slipping by as autumn hails wind beaten and bustling in colour across the North. His new job is going great, Ned Stark has turned out to be that kind of mentor he has always sought and never really found, and he and Robb have too much fun to actually class it as work. The holiday entitlement is heavenly too, the best he has ever had, which means he can spend a lot of the school holidays with Lya, starting with the October Half-Term.

The first day of half-term week comes with the usual fevered excitement with Lya bounding into his room and jumping up and down on the bed like a mini whirlwind. Her happiness radiates on her rosy cheeks and sleep-mad hair. Her cheerful mood has been noted in recent weeks. There hasn’t been a single pre-school tantrum or bout of sulking since little Ned Waters has become her friend, or since she twirled her way into the Northern School of Ballet. It’s only been three weeks since she started her lessons there but the change has really been something, he didn’t realise a child’s confidence could be effected so, stupidly, he should have known of course, but even six years later parenting is still an education to him.

They have already had several discussions over the weekend about how they want to spend the week, or rather, how Lya wants to spend it, because honestly, he would climb mountains if it was her idea of a good time.

They have a trip planned to see some film about woodland fairies at the cinema that Lya hasn’t been able to shut up about, the science museum and finally the grand sleepover at Arya and Gendry’s with little Ned. Sansa has also planned a workshop ‘fun day’ at the ballet school at the end of the week that the parents can come to the end of the day to see the dance they have learnt. He thinks he is looking forward to that just as much as Lya.

“Are you excited for a week off school sweetheart?”

It’s a real effort to not call her hummingbird, as Sansa does.

“So excited daddy,” she grins, toothy and high cheeked as she hinders, rather than helps to stir the batter for their pancakes whilst sitting on the worktop in the pyjamas, with her feet resting in the kitchen sink.

He swipes a splash of batter from her forehead that has gone rogue under her enthusiastic whisking.

“Remember that your mum is calling at 11 o’clock. Then we’ll go to the cinema this afternoon.”

Lya nods, only half-listening as her whisking has taken a ferocious speed. It’s been four weeks since either of them have spoken to Ygritte. She’s so far North that they only have infrequent use of a satellite phone when they re-stock for supplies at some research station north of the Frost Fangs. Lya’s been calmly good about, maybe too calm, seemingly fine beside a few incidents of tears at bedtime when she wanted her mum. He’s felt nervous for some reason about today’s scheduled call, mainly because he’s not sure how Ygritte is, or how she has coped in her first prolonged absence from them. Now nearly ten weeks. He doesn’t know how she’s doing it, he doesn’t think he could cope with being parted from his Lya for a snippet of that time.

“How do you feel about speaking to your mum? You’ve got lots to tell her about…”

At this he has Lya’s whole attention, as she passes him the bowl for his inspection as she nods vigorously, curls bouncing wildly.

“Yes daddy, about school, and dancing and Ned and…” she pauses to take in a rush of breath in her excitement. She’s so gorgeous, his animated little spark. Their daughter gets that thirst for life and all it offers from Ygritte, there’s not much that can be described as animated about Jon Snow, and he’s ok with that. Lya has enough life for the two of them, flitting about, vibrating with the joy of it all, flying, floating, dancing in the air… like a _hummingbird_.

*

Ygritte is many things, but timely is not one of them. So, when his phone rings at 10.40 he automatically thinks something is wrong as he lunges across the kitchen to grab it as the unknown number flashes on the screen.

“Hello?” He offers breathlessly, after stumbling over some of Lya’s books she has discarded in the open plan kitchen without a thought for his aged gait.

“Jon, it’s Sansa…”

She didn’t have to say. He’d recognise her breathy, bird-song voice anywhere.

“Sansa, how are you?”

“So, it’s a funny thing, I’m looking after riverbabe... I mean Ned. Sorry,” he hears her sigh, she sounds nervous somehow, it’s quite endearing, “I’m looking after my niece today. She hasn’t stopped talking about this new film that is out, something about fairies or nymphs or something…”

“Forest Fairies…” Jon offers, sparing her.

“That’s the one,” she laughs brightly, “anyway, little Ned can’t stop talking about it, and I was just calling to ask… well, Ned asked if I could ask you if you could ask Lya if she wanted to come with us to see it this afternoon…” She breathes out in a rush, so fast it takes him a few moments to wrack his brain about what she is asking.

“Oh, you want to take Lya with you?”

“Yes,” she pauses, sighing into the receiver. He rather likes her breathy little sighs.

“Actually, Lya and I were already going to see it today, hasn’t stopped talking about these bloody fairies for days,” he smiles as he hears her laugh down the phone.

“Ned’s the same, but you can’t blame them, I would have totally been into fairies with magical powers who take on an army of men trying to destroy their forest when I was that age…”

“Do you know what… I can totally imagine you would Sans,” he replies, automatically pinching his nose at how flirty he came across, but another one of her little huffs of breath makes him hopeful it hasn’t registered that he’s called her _Sans_ like the fucking idiot he is.

“Well, I’m sorry to bother you then, I hope you don’t think it weird, Robb gave me your number when little Ned wouldn’t stop asking and told me just to call you, I know we have it at the studio, you know, in case of emergencies and so on, I don’t want you to think I’m crossing some sort of line…”

“Sansa,” he interrupts her easily, “it’s fine, honestly, save my number, it makes sense…”

“Really? Well ok, but you save mine too…”

Like he needs to be told.

“Of course, I will, you are all basically stuck with me and Lya now anyway so…”

“That sounds good to me,” she says quietly.

_Gods._

It’s honestly a struggle to supress the groan threatening his voice box and the urge to smack his head against the fridge.

“Anyway… I’m sorry I bothered you, I should go,” she says, and he can almost see her nodding her head in that resolute Stark way.

“Sansa…”

He’s either an idiot or a genius but there’s only one way to find out.

“Yes, Jon.”

The way she sighs his name is more distracting than it should be, but he taps his fingers on the kitchen worktop twice for courage.

“Do you and Ned want to come with us? Lya and I, to the cinema… I mean it makes sense, if we’re already going and Ned wants to go too.”

“Oh, I mean… yes. That would be nice, well, Ned and Lya would like it I imagine.”

“Yeh, for the girls… well, I’ll text you to make arrangements to meet, we’ve got a call with Lya’s mum planned in five minutes but after that we’re completely free.”

There’s a brief lull before she speaks again.

“Right, sure, that would be great Jon, looking forward to it.”

So is he.

*

Jon and Ygritte have passed the pleasantries, she’s cursed more times than he can count about how bloody cold it is that far North, and how he would hate it as his hair would always be damp, but it’s a minute or so before Jon can finally get a word in and get into the nitty gritty.

“It’s a lot better, honestly, all things considered, I can’t believe how well Lya is doing, how settled she seems now…”

“Is that a dig Jon? The all things considered part?”

He sighs.

“No Ygg.”

They are having one of their frank conversation. In trust, any conversation with Ygritte is frank, borderline blunt. They decided to do it this way before they moved South to Wintertown and before Ygritte moved further North for her new job. They would talk first, so he could let her know everything that had happened in the last few weeks before she had her time on the phone with Lya. She was actually due to visit this half-term, but bad weather had made flying impossible that far North.

He didn’t want to feel let down by that, well, he didn’t want Lya to feel let down by that, but Ygritte was the kind of person to just appear one day and completely change her plans. That level of spontaneity makes him feel uncomfortable these days, he used to think it was sexy and unexciting, but times have changed.

“I’m only joking with you Jon.”

He decides to bluster on with his little pre-planned list of things to tell her about, he actually wrote them down too, Ygritte has a tendency to digress a lot and he doesn’t want to miss anything important.

“School is much better. She… well she hated it, but a few weeks has made a real difference. Her teachers are happy. I think it’s all down to her making friends really, well one friend especially, it’s actually Robb’s niece…”

“Ahh… how is golden boy?”

He ignores the jab without missing a beat.

“Her names Ned, they actually didn’t meet through Robb, they met at the ballet classes she has been going to…”

“Ballet?” Ygritte interrupts again, it’s half a scoff, half a disbelieving exclamation.

“Yeh, she loves it actually,” he offers a tad defensively, “I don’t know why I was surprised really. She did this taster class and then that was it. It’s basically all she talks about now. She’s made me watch this dance about snowflakes that her and her friend made up about a thousand times now, it’s the sweetest bloody thing I’ve ever seen,” he chuckles warmly to himself.

“Ballet though… isn’t it a bit… I don’t know…”

Ygritte’s getting frustrated, he can tell, she reaches for words and stands of thought when she’s not happy.

“…girly?” She finishes finally, “it isn’t easy to picture it.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say Ygritte. She’s happy, she’s making friends, she isn’t sitting in the house every night of the week or doing meth at the playground. She’s having fun… that’s what it’s all about…” he sighs, “besides, the ballet school is great too, I’m sure you could watch a class when you visit, _they_ seem ok with that sort of thing.”

He doesn’t know why he says _they_ and not Sansa.

Well he knows, but he doesn’t want to admit to his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child that he can’t stop thinking about his daughter’s ballet teacher.

*

“Ned!”

“Lya!”

They spot Sansa and little Ned across the street, waiting outside the cinema like people do in old movies. Sansa’s easy to find in the Wintertown crowd of shoppers as they weave in and out of one another, making haste to conclude their business in the latest break in October rainfall. Her hair is like a beacon, calling them in like a boat to shore, and she’s beautiful too, so beautiful.

He’s not seen her in a few weeks, since that Sunday at Winterfell where she flirted with him, well, he thinks it was flirting, since he had his hands on her waist, warm and dainty in his grasp as he lifted her in the air like he’d imagined doing since he’d first seen her dance on that video on Theon’s phone.

He shouldn’t have done it.

But he had, and he couldn’t find himself to be sorry.

He’d thought she looked perfect that day, as she glided into the kitchen with Ned and Lya nestled on one of her hips, hips he had later ran his hands up. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair was tousled, and she was wearing that gods forsaken rugby shirt. She looked perfect today too, standing on the curb and holding her niece by the shoulders as Ned bounced at her feet, likely to stop her vaulting in the road, as he was doing with Lya in their excitement. She was wearing black jeans and a black jumper, wrapped in one of those beige raincoats you saw in those fancy fashion campaigns where beautiful people ran in and out of puddles and danced in the rain.

He thought not seeing her for a little while, with Meera doing most of the pick-ups at ballet, and she hadn’t been to the pub in a while, that it would dull his attraction to her. He was a fool. It hadn’t. He’s almost certain she was flirting with him that Sunday, practically drank him in as she looked him up and down. Fuck. He’d be her fly-half if she wanted. He didn’t want to fuck this up though, this tentative and new-found security and happiness Lya had felt. Even Ygritte had made it clear she thought it wouldn’t last, that ballet and her friends and the Starks were a fad, a phase, something new and better and brighter would be just around the corner.

He really fucking hated that Ygritte thought that.

He couldn’t screw this up. Lya wasn’t so flighty, but he wouldn’t risk making a move on his daughters’ teacher.

He carefully manoeuvred Lya across the road where she wasted little time in making a break for freedom once they had crossed the traffic so she could greet Ned enthusiastically, like a small flock of dancing flamingos.

“Hi Jon,” Sansa smiled shyly, offering a little wave of her hand from beside them, “I hope you don’t mind us intruding,” she said gesturing to Ned.

They’re not intruding, not at all, but he can’t help the funny feeling he’s had all morning that maybe Lya and Ned are not so innocent in this, that Ned would want to see the film on the exact same afternoon they are, the same afternoon that Sansa is babysitting. It’s all rather rosy, and like his mum always said, if something seems like too much of a good thing, it probably is.

“Anytime Sansa,” he says clearing the thickness from his throat, “besides, I don’t think we could separate these two now anyway,” he comments, gesturing to the girls who are already discussing what sweets they hope they can get for their pick’a’mix bags.

“Thick as thieves,” Sansa replies warmly, “well, if we can’t beat them, we might as well join them… lead the way girls,” she chirps in her delicate voice as the girls charge head long into the foyer, he gestures for her to follow on and guides her through the crowd, unable to fight his hand from automatically going to the small of her back.

She smiles at his briefly, tilting her head just slightly in his direction as her fire-kissed hair swings behind her.

“So, are you coming to the parents evening at the end of the workshop in the week?” She asks, and she seems unsure of herself again, as they join the queue for tickets amongst the other families braving the half-term chaos of the cinema in town.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he replies easily, because it is easy, “I always try to be involved in as much as I can,” he sighs, “what with Lya’s mum not being here,” he glances over to Lya who is already filling her sweet bag heartily with Ned at the concessions beside them.

“Meera mentioned something,” Sansa offers sympathetically, “and I kind of guessed, plus Lya hasn’t really mentioned anything…” she bites her lip them, looking apologetic, like she’s overstepped.

“It’s fine,” he shrugs, “she doesn’t talk about it too much, I don’t know,” he sighs again, “she loves her mum, don’t get me wrong, they spoke today and they just giggle the whole time, but Ygritte… she’s quite unique I guess, a free spirit. She’s got this job, way up North, no phones, can’t visit a lot, she said it was something she just needed to do so there wasn’t really any reason for us to stay in Hardhome, it wasn’t really a home for us, for Lya and me. That’s what Lya has needed, I think… a real home.”

He’s not sure why he’s telling her this, as they find themselves surrounded by happy families, kids and grown-ups, but he supposes whatever their situation, they are just trying to make it work just like Jon is.

“You also…” Sansa says, as her arm comes up to rest comfortingly on his forearm.

“Sorry?”

“Maybe you needed a home too Jon.”

She says it so simply, with such clarity.

“Yeh,” he breathes, “I think you’re right…”

She smiles, practically beams at him before squeezing his forearm once more and lowering her hand, she pauses briefly, worrying her grape juice pink lip under her teeth before stealing a breath to ask him whatever it is she has been mulling it that pretty head of hers.

“Have you found it, Jon… have you found your home?”

“Yes. I think I have”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh baby.   
> Next, a little ballet workshop action, a little Jon and Arya, maybe a little pub shenanigans if I get there... we are making progress people...


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's workshop day for Sansa's forest fairies.   
> Arya gives Sansa some sisterly advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short update.   
> I'm trying to be better.   
> A happy evening to you all my hearts.

“So, I have a theory,” Arya muttered, before sticking her tongue out in concentration and trying to attach another feather with sheer will alone to stick to the cardboard wings laid out before them.

Sansa’s only briefly regretting making the theme of her half-term workshop for her nieces’ class the Forest Fairies, but she had promised Ned after she had taken her to the cinema. Well, after her _and_ Jon had taken her to the cinema.

Sansa offered a brief raise of her eyebrows at Arya’s statement. Arya often had a lot of theories, like her belief that the Children of the Forest still existed and were being harvested as weapons by the government in case the South ever rose up against the North again. Sansa had little time for her ramblings, especially when she had twenty sets of wings to make in the next two hours and her studio was currently covered in an indecent array of ribbons, feathers and sequins.

It was messy enough to make her twitch.

“You’ll want to hear this one…” Arya offered in a sing-song tone that would rival Sansa’s at her most annoying.

“Go on then, humour me,” she sighed.

“You need a good fuck.”

“Arya!” She hissed, whipping her head to little Ned who was leaning against the mirrored wall with her i-pad in her lap and thankfully, a set of headphones on her angelic and innocent head.

“She can’t hear me,” Arya huffed, waving a hand in Ned’s direction, “why do you think I got her those head-phones? How else will Gendry and I plan our nightly sex marathons?”

“Nightly? Bloody hell Arya, you need to calm down!”

Arya barked a laugh before blowing a feather which was half glued to her upper lip.

“Not likely, you’ve seen Gendry’s arms, so I know you understand, the man can throw me around like a bag of sugar…” she sighed wistfully before whipping the purple ribbon Sansa was twirling out of her hand, “besides, you haven’t denied it, how long has it been, since twinkle-toes and you…”

“I’m not talking about him right now,” Sansa snarked, a little more heatedly than necessary, glancing in her sister’s direction with a pout firmly on her lips as Arya smirked at her.

“Again, not denying it. It’s such a waste Sans, being as flexible as you are and not shagging at every opportunity…”

“I can’t help it that I’m hypermobile,” she grumbled, snatching back her purple feather to drape onto the set of fairy wings in her lap.

“Exactly! This is what I’m saying, use the gifts the gods have given you, its only fair… and for the third time, you are not denying it…”

“Fine, what makes you think I need a good….” She trailed off, biting her lip.

“Fuck?” Arya offered, “because since I arrived…” she continued, glancing at the antique brass clock on the wall for emphasis, “thirty minutes ago, to help you with this gods awful torture,” she gestured to the mess of glue and glitter before them, “you’ve mentioned Jon six times.” Arya sat back smugly, looking at her with that steady gaze that only a Stark could possess, the gaze that said, _go on, lie to me, I dare you_.

“Well of course I have Arya, I was telling you a story in which he was there, obviously I’m going to mention him,” Sansa scoffed, and she was now decidedly regretting talking about the impromptu cinema trip with Lya and little Ned.

“ _He was so kind to get the tickets_ ,” Arya mimicked Sansa’s earlier statement in her chirpy and feminine tone. It was uncanny, she would be impressed if she wasn’t so bloody annoyed, “ _he’s so sweet with the girls_ ,” Arya continued, “ _he’s funny too, he made me laugh out loud during the movie_ …” Arya finished, raising her eyebrows in Sansa’s direction.

Fair enough, she had said all these things about Jon to Arya. She might have been a bit obvious.

“Do you have a hot dad kink? No wait, it’s the man-bun…”

“It’s just a bun Arya, you don’t have to differentiate between male and female hairstyles…”

“Oh, it is, it’s the hair, he’s got the whole dark and broody thing going on, plus he’s built, totally not like anyone you’ve been into before. It’s time you threw that southern thing out the window, it never did you any good.”

Sansa felt herself blushing and knew the gig was up. She huffed once more before tossing the wings onto the floor in defeat, sending the surrounding layer of feathers into disarray, whirling around them like a clock of her own disdain.

Sansa sighed heavily.

“Objectively, he is very handsome, and sweet, are you happy now?” Sansa offered, she risked a peak at Arya who had her arms across her chest, head cocked to the side as she wordlessly screamed _bullshit_ at her.

“Fine, he’s hot, so fucking hot!” Sansa dropped her head into her hands with a groan and ignored Arya’s shriek of glee, whether it was at her admission or the rare use of profanity she wasn’t sure, “he’s got such nice hands,” Sansa whimpered, “you know I’ve always had a thing for nice, big hands,” Sansa whispered into her palms.

“This is so amazing…” Arya said dazedly as Sansa continued to sulk in front of her, “honestly, I can’t wait to discuss an action plan with Theon.”

“Please, for the love of the gods Arya,” Sansa whipped her head up and glared at her sister, “please tell me how me being gone on the father of one of my students, who also happens to be dad’s employee and Robb’s best friend is a good thing?”

Arya sighed, only a little more sympathetically.

“Firstly, it’s the 21st century, who gives a shit about Robb’s fragile male ego and the patriarchal misbelief that brothers have any say in what their sisters do with their bodies, or our fathers or employers, secondly, Robb would probably applaud, considering how much he detested that dick from Kings Landing, thirdly, I realise those two statements contradict my reference to the damn patriarchy, but society has done this to me….”

“Breathe, Arya.”

“Breathing…” she said before sucking in a deep breath, “dad just wants you to be happy, so unless you plan on letting Jon fuck you in dad’s conference room, I think you’re good.” Arya sighed, flicking her gaze to her daughter who sat so quietly, mouthing along to the cartoon she was watching, “the Lya thing… ok I kind of get it Sans. She’s new here, she’s not had it easy, I still don’t totally get the story about her weirdo, mystery, hippie mum,” Arya shrugged.

“So, what are you saying exactly?”

“I’m saying that I respect that you may not want to rock the boat, but I think you are just hiding behind the fact she is your student. Like that’s even an issue ethically? It’s her dad, who cares? What’s more important is that she will always be Jon’s number one girl, but I think you can handle that. But I get it, this is what you do, you worry about everyone else, you disregard your own feelings and then you settle for something less that you deserve or less that what you actually want. You’ve been doing this for years Sansa.”

Arya’s annoying like this. Always has been. Annoying and lovely. She has always been able to see beneath the smoke, under what ever mask of courtesy or fabled attempt at self-preservation Sansa has ever had. She’s just like her papa in that regard. A Stark always knows. As teenagers Sansa and Arya loathed one another, as adults, they lean on the sturdy shoulders they both offer with the undying devotion only sisters can possess.

Sansa wants to cry, because Arya’s right. She wants to scream too and wipe that smug look off her sisters irritating little face.

“Arya…” she sighs, “I appreciate your honesty, you know I always do, but can we drop it now?”

“Fine, I’m dropping it, just remember it’s ok to do something if it makes you happy Sans, you don’t have to feel guilty about being happy anymore, this isn’t Kings Landing…”

That she knows better than anyone.

“… especially if the thing that makes you happy is fucking.”

“ARYA!”

*

The workshop is the most successful yet. She partly places the success at the feet of the topical theme, with most of the students having seen the Forest Fairies during half-term. Her battered feet have little to do with it.

Their enthusiasm is catching, her forlorn mood long forgotten throughout the afternoon as the girls learn the dance she has choreographed, their delightful exclamations when Arya and she brought out their wings and little green chiffon skirts lasted long into the afternoon. Sansa had even gotten herself a skirt, her father would likely call it a handkerchief, lacking in fabric as it was. So happy at the mixture of cardboard wings adorned with all kinds of paraphernalia was Lya that she demanded to the room that Miss Sansa should have a pair of wings too. Her argument had such conviction that Sansa is almost certain there is a promising career in politics for her.

This is how the workshop soon turned into an impromptu arts and crafts class. She told the group of twenty fairies before her that if they wanted her to have wings, they would have the pleasure of creating them for her, much to their joy. She’s sure there is glue and half a ton of feathers in her bun, but she couldn’t care less.

Sansa and Arya had a matter of minutes to sweep away the disarray of silver ribbons, sequins, buttons and feathers that the girls had chosen, apparently as the Fairy Queen, only silver would do, before the parents arrived to see their performance.

Her eyes, as they seemed to do so often now, easily found their way to Jon, who looked on so wistfully as he sat amongst the other parents, watching their children, dressed as fairies in their imaginary charge against the men who had come to destroy their forest. It was laid-back, simple, youthful fun. No examinations, no grading, just a few hours for them to enjoy themselves as carefree six-year-olds should.

She stood with the rest of the parents when their dance had come to an end and offered her applause, before gesturing wordlessly for them to gather and curtsey before the end of the workshop. She loved this bit, where her students would run to find their parents, chatting animatedly about what they had thought, there was always a parent who cried, much to their mortification, no matter how hard they tried to hide it, and that always reminded her of when her father had come to watch her dance as a girl. Come to think of it, Ned Stark had been known to wipe an errant tear when she danced for the Royal Ballet for all those years too.

She began saying goodbye to several of the girls and parents, dropping into conversation here and there. She spotted Arya who had her back to her, talking to Jon. She spotted Arya’s back second, for firstly she had noticed that although Jon was talking to Arya, his eyes were already on her, looking past her sisters’ shoulder as Arya and Jon continued to speak quietly with one another. Sansa couldn’t help but offer him a small smile.

A few moments later Jon was nodding enthusiastically to Arya, patting her on the shoulder in goodbye before making his way across the room where Sansa lingered at the piano, shuffling sheet music that was already perfectly ordered.

“Hey you,” Jon smiled in his small way, “that was amazing Sans,” he said, “although I think I will be washing glitter and feathers out of Lya’s hair for a week.”

She laughed, crossing her arms shyly across her chest.

“Guilty, I’m afraid,” she said, glancing downwards.

What was wrong with her? Why could she suddenly not talk to him like an adult. She wanted to throttle Arya and her irritating ideas and infuriating mouth.

“So…” Jon furrowed his brow and swallowed deeply, “Lya and Ned are sleeping over at your parents tonight, apparently your mum had promised and insisted…”

“That sounds like mum,” she shrugged.

“… yeh, anyway, Robb and Theon were going to meet me for a few drinks, I’ve just convinced Arya and Gendry to half their date night…”

“You’re brave,” she couldn’t help the grin spreading across her face.

“Why?”

Gods he looked lovely when he was confused.

“Let’s just say they aren’t very PG13 when they have a child-free night…”

The corner of his mouth quirked, and he raised an eyebrow at her.

“There’s nothing wrong with that…”

He stared at her, the kind of intense gaze that felt hard and heavy, like someone was pressing on her shoulders, or like she was under water, the kind of heady look that made her cheeks tingle and brighten, cherry-blossom pink, just as they were now.

“No, I suppose there isn’t,” she replied, voice small as a shallow breeze.

“So?”

“I’m sorry?” Sansa asked, completely at a loss.

“Drinks, at the pub tonight?” She was certain he added the rake of his hand through his unruly hair just to torture her.

“Oh, right, drinks. Erm… I’m not sure, I will have to see…”

She wanted to go. She wanted to spend more time with him.

So why didn’t she say yes? They wouldn’t be alone, her brother would be there for goodness sakes. But instead, Sansa Stark did what she thought was right, what she thought would be better for everyone.

She remembered her half-meant declaration to Arya about not wanting to mess anything up for Lya, or for Jon, or for Robb or Ned.

Funny how none of those people were her.

But this was nothing new. She had always been like this. The three missed calls from the Southern mobile number that she had received on her phone today alone where evidence enough. She could ignore the inevitable for as long as she could, but the truth always caught up with you in the end.

So instead of telling Jon Snow that _yes, yes, yes_ , she would love to have a drink with him, that she would love to spend more time with him, she continued to mutter some concocted excuse about paperwork that absolutely had to be completed today and a new piece she was choreographing that needed her dedication.

“Sansa, its fine,” he said kindly, “if you can make it great, if not, don’t worry.”

Why was he so nice? She wasn’t used to being treated so gently by a man, by someone who actually listened and didn’t mind if she didn’t want to do something.

“OK, I’ll see you soon anyway I’d imagine.”

“Always…” he paused as he turned to seek Lya out, “Oh Sans…”

“Yes,” she said breathlessly.

“You make a very pretty fairy Queen,” he teased, gesturing to the wings still strapped to her before catching her the green chiffon material of her skirt in between his fingers. He frowned down at her skirt, giving it a gentle tug, before turning and leaving her with her piano and perfectly ordered sheet music.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a funny thing...   
> I find writing to be incredibly helpful. It makes me feel good. So when I get into a little melancholy place, I put it off, even though I know it's good for me.   
> My favourite part of this chapter is Arya's pearls of wisdom... that Sansa should do more of what she wants, what is good for her.   
> So I'm trying to take that advice, and pop myself out of my little melancholy place.   
> I hope you're still there... my beautiful hearts.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feelings are hidden away as a girl dances her troubles away.   
> Feelings are acknowledged with a little liquid courage.   
> Pubs, flirting, are we getting somewhere?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little update for you.

“There they are!”

Robb’s joyful calls are soon drowned out by Arya’s victorious cries as Gendry slams down a tray of whiskey onto the table to mark their arrival.

Jon sees the night going one way, and he’s more than grateful that Lya is happily occupied at Cat and Ned’s until at least late morning tomorrow.

“Listen here lads, seeing as you’ve interrupted our marathon of _alone time_ …” she pauses to make quotation marks with the flex of her fingers.

“Arya,” Robb grumbles.

“As I was saying… _alone time_ , you fuckers better at least be half amusing tonight.”

Jon loves them, all of them, this mis-matched and jumbled pseudo family that has adopted him and Lya, flung into the fold against their will. He loves them for it. Plain and simple.

Gendry settles his imposing frame onto the cosy and slouchy settee that spreads one of the sides of the mahogany table Theon and Robb had commandeered when they arrived, before throwing his arm around Arya’s shoulder and using his free hand to push the tray of whiskey towards Jon, Robb and Theon, where they teeter on their stalls with the happy flush of being three-drinks-deep nestled on their cheeks.

“A toast, monster and maidens,” Theon drawls, offering Arya a salute as he implicates her as the monster, which makes her look positively gleeful, “what is dead may never die…”

Arya groaned, lowering her head onto the table.

“Don’t start, Robb will start waxing about wolves and winter and I’m not nearly drunk enough for this shit.”

“The night is young, little Stark,” Jon grinned, raising his glass to them.

“Speaking of maidens, where is Sansa?” Robb asked.

“We stopped back at the studio on our way here,” Gendry sighed, “but she was busy doing all that dancy stuff,” he gestured with an enthusiastic twirl of his hands.

“Dancy stuff? That’s great use of our beautiful language there babe,” Arya patted Gendry on the head, “yeh she was doing that thing she does, she barely acknowledged we were there until she started pirouetting aggressively again.”

“What?” Theon frowned in Arya’s direction. Jon was lost trying to follow them, “like before?”

“No, definitely not like that,” Arya cautioned, “she’s just thinking, you know what she’s like, chill.”

Jon couldn’t ignore the way her eyes flashed to him, quick enough to miss.

“Fuck this,” Theon sighed, looking to Robb for a second before pulling out his phone. He held it up to his ear with a frown clouding his face.

“Baby,” he cooed, his face relaxing automatically at the tinkering on the other side.

“Princess… Sweetheart,” Theon continued his torrent of endearments. Jon smiled at his suspicion that Sansa was likely giving him a polite yet firm tongue lashing on the other end.

She’s not your baby Greyjoy. He’d thought that the first night he’d ever met her.

“Angel… my Lady… there she is! Where are you? I don’t care what you’re trying to do with your legs right now, so what you can wrap them both around your head at the same time? That’s old news baby,” Theon paused to wag his eyebrows in Jon’s direction who was doing his best now to choke on his whiskey, “I know you’re not actually doing that right now… I said that for comedic value… I’m hilarious, I know. Look baby…”

Theon paused again, frowning down at the table intently as he listened.

“Sans, don’t lie to me baby… I’ll be there is five.” Theon slide his phone into his back pocket as he stood without offering a goodbye, “I’m going to fetch her, we can’t have her mopping in her pointe shoes till her toes fall off,” he sighed.

After Theon headed for the door of the Wolf’s Head and Gendry headed to the bar for more whiskey Jon risked a glance at Robb and Arya, who seemed to be locked in some sort of battle of wills in which they communicated without opening their mouths.

“What’s going on? Is Sansa ok?” Jon asked.

“Sansa’s fine,” Arya interjected, holding up a hand to stop Robb from drawing breath.

“When she has a lot on her mind, she kind of takes herself off on her own,” Robb said quietly.

“It’s a habit, that’s all, she was alone in Kings Landing for a decade, she’s used to the solitude… don’t worry your pretty little head about it Snow… oh! That reminds me…” Arya flicked a beer mat at him, “don’t think I didn’t see you earlier Snow, flirting with her and tugging on her skirt like the dirty old sea dog you are! In front of the children no less, have you no shame?”

Jon had the dignity to at least drop his chin to his chest to try and hide his grin, because he was a little buzzed, and in truth he half loved her teasing and he couldn’t really bring himself to feel sorry about making Sansa blush so prettily, and those skirts would surely be the death of him one of these days.

“Were you flirting with our sister, Snow? The outrage!” Robb scoffed from beside him.

“Yeh, you look real cut up about it mate,” Jon drawled at his obviously gleeful friend.

“You could at least ask her out or something Jon, the two of you twirling around one another is really getting dull, I need some light entertainment around here,” Arya fixed him with one of her piercing looks.

“What do you mean the two of us?” Jon asked, brow furrowed in confusion.

“Well I think its safe to say that you like her…” Arya coaxed, talking to him very slowly to ensure he understood.

“I think that’s fairly obvious at this point,” he drawled.

It felt nice to say that. In all honestly, he was just as fed up with dancing around it now. He wanted Sansa Stark. He hadn’t wanted another woman like this since he met Ygritte at Uni, but the auburn haired ballerina had captivated him, body and mind, and despite his better judgement, despite the strings that tied them to one another’s lives through their friends, his job, her family and his daughter, he didn’t want to hide it.

“Yes… idiot, so you like her and…”

“And…”

“Gods, how do you survive being so simple? It’s a good job you’re beautiful. I’m not going to spell it out for you Snow. Now shut the fuck up, they’re back.” Arya fanned her skinny arms around her.

Jon turned his head towards the direction of Arya’s excitable hand waving and found Theon marching over to the little area they had claimed, grinning mischievously whilst piggybacking a rather disgruntled looking Sansa on his back.

“Look who I found?” Theon chirped.

“You didn’t find me, you horrid, horrid man, you accosted me! In my own dance studio no less, where I was perfectly happy,” Sansa snipped. She was gloriously lovely when she pouted and even more so when she swatted Theon on the shoulder.

“You were not perfectly happy, you were mopping!”

“Traitor,” she hissed, “now put me down…. Gently,” she winced.

“What’s wrong Sans?” Robb asked, a tell-tale whiskey induced flush on his cheeks.

“Nothing, I’ve just been working on this new solo piece and well…” she nestled herself gracefully on the settee, “I must be out of shape,” she shrugged.

Out of shape? Dear gods. The woman was insane.

“What’s the new solo for?”

“Just something I choreographed for me, Robby” she smiled.

Jon had watched the exchange avidly, as she coolly addressed Theon, despite the softness in her eyes and then smiled so sweetly at her brother the next. More than anything, she was glad she was here.

“Well, since I have been bullied into coming here, Theon Greyjoy I’m looking at you,” she pointed an elegant finger in the accused’s direction, “and considering I feel my feet are about to fall off, I think that is an excellent reason for me to get as tipsy as I please… so, shall we?”

*

It turned out to be one of those nights. By 9pm, it was safe to say they were all pleasantly blasted.

Throughout the evening places and bodies had changed and swapped with one another. Jon counted his lucky stars that with Arya and Gendry already having slunk off into the night with one another, and Robb and Theon talking to two women unfortunate enough to be in their immediate vicinity, Jon had found himself on the battered and ungodly comfortable settee with Sansa.

She’d somehow managed to make lounging back with her head tipped onto the back cushions look elegant and feminine.

“You look very cosy there, _primrose_ ,” he grinned, feeling the hazy tingle of alcohol heat his cheeks.

“That’s what my dad calls me,” she smiled.

“I know.”

“Ned Stark has a _primrose_ , and Jon Snow has a _hummingbird_ ,” she whispered softly.

He hummed in response. Turning his head to the side as he nestled back into the cushions, mirroring her position and fixing his gaze on her. They stayed like that for a time, long enough for the condensation on their tumblers to meander down to the tattered mahogany table that they sat on, two people, stares locked as they drink one another in far more successfully than they do from their discarded glasses.

“You have nice hands…” she sighs suddenly, brow furrowed, wincing at her own words, “a fly-half with nice hands,” she tips her head back to stare at the ceiling and covers her face with her hands, giggling, tipsy and care-free.

“Are you flirting with me, Sansa Stark?”

He’s grinning like a fool as she heartily ignores him, save for the small peak between her fingers as she tries and fails to stare at him discreetly. Ironically its his cheeks that heat under her stare. She drops her hands into her lap as she laughs again, fleetingly, breathlessly, a little sound like a spring gust on a windowpane. He likes her like this, dewy cheeked, hair tousled, eyes alight with mischief and half formed misdeeds, wrapped in skin-flushed jeans and a sweatshirt bearing her dance schools logo that he knows she threw on as she huffed her indignation at Theon as he commandeered her evening.

Whatever her previous reason for not wanting to be here, she looks glad she is. He’s glad too.

She’s still staring, biting her lip now and the action only serves to divert his attention back to her pretty mouth. His thoughts about Sansa in the months he has known her have marked her as something pure in his mind, something good and sweet, a nice girl who cares about everyone she encounters, and she is all of those things to be sure, but right now, she looks like a woman.

A woman he wants, one he would happily devour, hands, lips, tongue and teeth. He’d love to know if she would sigh so sweetly underneath him. He cannot even be sorry for how much he wants her, not for a second.

He reaches with a hand, heavy and sleepy from a week over-doing it at work, Lya and an evening consuming too much whiskey, and picks up a strand of her hair that has fallen wild and loose around her face and he twirls it between his fingers.

She bites down on her lip harder.

“Kissed by fire,” he whispers.

“What – what does that mean?” she stutters.

“It means you are lucky. _Faodail._ It means you are free and strong, and those who know you will be lucky too…”

She mulls over the words, eyebrows pulled together, throat bobbing as she swallows.

“Lucky, free, strong,” she says the words wistfully, eyes glancing as he continues to twirl the hair that should burn him between his fingers, “I don’t think they are words people would use to describe me…”

He smiles then, half drunk on cheap whiskey and her, the fire-kissed ballerina, porcelain and fair, who looks like she belongs twirling in a tinkering jewellery box, far more than the painfully normal pub they find themselves in, slumped together on an ancient settee.

“Well, maybe they don’t know you, maybe they don’t see you.”

He thinks he knows her. He sees her too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Faodail – means 'a lucky find' in Scots Gaelic. 
> 
> The burn may be slow but the wick is running shorter.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa has lunch at her father's offices.

Sansa’s chosen career has meant that over the years, as a rule, she doesn’t drink that much. Sure, she has wine with dinner and a good quality gin, she’s not an animal, but as she dedicated her life to her art, she missed the whole wild exploration of alcohol that most young people go through.

She was too much of a _good girl_ for that. She cared too much to turn up hungover to rehearsals.

Times, apparently, have changed.

Waking up on a Friday morning with a hangover is fairly scandalous in her book. She knows Arya and Robb will swoon and gasp with feigned horror when they find out, and no doubt they will find out once they’ve likely stopped nursing hangovers of their own.

She discovers that unnerving feeling her siblings often have the morning after a night of revelry. The _Beer Fear_ , as Robb calls it. She takes a few minutes, laying on her stomach, no doubt a dishevelled wreck, wincing at the sunlight that streams into her room from the window she carelessly forgot to cover with curtains in her drunken state, to reflect on what embarrassment she could have caused herself last night.

A dry throat signals that she really did honour her vow to get pleasantly blasted. No headache though. The only aches she feels, as she rolls and stretches like a cat in a patch of sun is her limbs and feet, the _Ballet Hangover_ , as she calls it. It’s nothing new to her to wake up sore from dancing the day before.

It’s the kind of ache she loves.

She giggles to the ceiling as she remembers Theon walking her home. Well, actually, he had carried her home on his back, she had demanded to leave the pub in the same mode of transport as she had arrived.

Theon had turned up at her studio with that little forlorn look on his face, like a sad little squid who had been washed ashore, looking at her like she was a fragile and broken thing. She was only half glad that at least he hadn’t dragged Robb along with him, so they could both irritate her. She was glad Theon had come though, saving herself from dancing away her frustrations, one pirouette at a time.

She’d had fun. Teasing and being teased, proposing ridiculous toast after toast with Theon, making Gendry blush with Arya and having the warm and safe arm of her brother around her shoulders. Jon too.

Oh. Jon.

_Gods._

She groaned aloud and rolled back onto her face. She had told him he had nice hands. At least it wasn’t a lie she supposed. At least she hadn’t hid something that was on her mind for once.

Neither had he. _Kissed-by-fire_. She had wanted him, for a time at least, with their heads nestled together, inches apart on the settee as he whispered words in the old-tongue, to lean forward and kiss her, to take his lips in hers in the hope that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

It was nice to see Jon-the-man last night. Not Jon-the-father, or Jon-the-friend. Just the roughish, cheeky, brooding and soulful Jon, whose gaze she caught lingering on her lips as he toyed with her hair.

Gods he really did have nice hands.

Sansa’s phone vibrated on the bedside table next to her, where she spotted her dear, sweet Theon had even put in on charge for her. She snatched it up, rolling over again in a tangle of sheets and covers and groaning again at the Kings Landing area code that flashed on the screen. She plonked the phone on the bed, letting it ring out and slipping out of bed.

She needed a shower, and maybe her papa too.

*

When Sansa first returned to the North, she was able to do lots of things she hadn’t for many years, or start new traditions that she’s never been able to, having left her homeland at such a young age. She’d have brunch with her mother, she’d take little Ned to soft play, which her niece insists she’s too old and too ladylike for now which Sansa thinks is shocking, who is too old for ball ponds? She got to drink pinot grigio and eat cold pizza with Arya on a weeknight just because. But mostly, she loved having lunch with her father.

Once the ballet school really took off she didn’t get to do this as much as she likes, but when she had some free time, no matter the day, Ned Stark would always find a way to fit her into his schedule for an impromptu lunch date. He never said no, no matter how busy her architect-extraordinaire father was.

Today was one of those days. Sansa didn’t have any classes until late afternoon. Often her and her father would go out for lunch, meeting at one of the numerous cafes or restaurants near his office, but his secretary had told her on the phone that he didn’t have too much time today which had led to her grabbing some filled baguettes and coffee from the local bakery for them.

She absolutely hadn’t thought about the chance of bumping into a certain raven-haired gentleman with a voice like sin and hands to match. The fact that she was wearing one of her nicest (shortest) skirts over her dark tights and boots was a happy coincidence.

Sansa breezed out of the lift in her father’s building, cheeks chilly from the icy breeze outside with a deli bag in one hand and a tray of coffee precariously balanced in the other before making her way to her fathers office in offering a quick hello to those she passed and a light-hearted eye-roll at the gaggle of grinning student architects that always seemed to occupy the middle of the floor as they tried to catch her attention whilst unsubtly elbowing their counterparts. Robb would give them hell if he spotted it and likely tease her till the end of time.

She tapped on the bottom of the open office door with the toe of her heeled boot and grinned as her father rose to greet her and rescue her from her burden filled hands.

“Primrose,” he said softly.

“Papa,” she smiled, standing on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek as he wrestled the bag from her hand and she walked over to his desk to place the tray of coffees down.

“Gods you are just like your mother, are you feeding an army?” he asked, peering into the paper bag.

“if I was just like mum I would give you a dressing down for such sarcasm, and no not an army per-say… but you and I both well know that if Robb ever found out I came in here with food and didn’t bring him anything that he would never speak to me again.”

“That does sound like your brother, I’ll just email him to let him know you’re here, he’s in a meeting with a client but he should be finished any minute.”

“Good, at least I have you to myself for a little while, you seem so busy papa, I hope you’re not overdoing it,” she said gently, her eyebrows worrying.

“Ahh,” he sighed, taking out the proffered selection of baguettes, frowning down at them in confusion before his eyes drifted over to the coffee cups, Sansa snatched one up and passed him one, leaving the others in the cardboard tray as to distract him.

“You were saying,” she coaxed.

“Yes, all Jon’s doing I’m afraid.”

“Really?” She pressed her lips together and hid them behind her own cup.

“Hmm,” her father hummed, appraising her as he pressed his hands together in front of him like an ancient statue of old, “yes, as you know, your brother has always headed up the new design aspect of the business and I’ve always preferred the restoration of historical buildings…”

“If it isn’t at least two-hundred years old then Ned Stark isn’t interested,” she grinned.

“…exactly, relics just like me, anyway, Jon’s just the same, its why I was so eager to have him onboard really. He’s a bit of a specialist. The aim is to shift off some of my work-load to him in a few years so I can finally step back a bit, as I’ve been promising your mother for the last ten-years,” he sighed, his eyes glancing down to the grainy framed photo of her parents on their wedding day that sat pride of place on his desk.

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Sansa smiled at the wistful look on his face.

“Hmm, you may be right, Jon is half the problem, he’s ended up doing far better then I had anticipated and brought on so much more business that its all hands to the post. I think the competition is doing Robb good,” Ned chuckled.

“Well, Jon seems the type to always try his best,” Sansa fiddled with her hands in her lap.

“Yes, he is rather the good sort, isn’t he?” Her father asked, raising an eyebrow and leaning back in his chair.

“I suppose he is,” she said as she hid the small smile threatening her lips, “anyway, Robb deserves the competition, it will do his ego the world of good,” she said primly as her father started laughing again softly.

“You wound me sister!” Robb scoffed, barrelling into their fathers office without announcing himself, “here I was thinking you had graced us with your presence to share a lovely lunch with us,” he smirked, dropping himself into the seat next to her and leaning over to pinch her lightly on the arm.

“Wrong, I’m afraid. I came here to have lunch with my darling papa, not you,” she smiled sweetly as she batted his hand away.

“Just with dad, aye?” He questions with a smirk on his lips, a smirk that tells her all she needs to know, shining like a warning beacon.

“Yes, Robb.”

Her brother picks up one of the wrapped baguettes on the desk, without preamble and failing to offer any to either herself or her father, and without even checking the filling, because honestly the man will eat anything. He uses the baguette like a sabre, gesturing the fayre laid out in front of them.

“Now, I just don’t think that’s true sweet sister. See, if we deduce the facts, there are indeed four cups of coffee and four baguettes, now, not that I am not eternally grateful that you have offered to feed me today, but even the very good and proper Sansa Stark would not buy me two baguettes. So, Sans, you, me and dear old dad equals three, so who is the lucky person who is worthy of a Sansa Stark hand-delivered lunch?”

She twists her lips to stop from laughing in his face, mainly because she is furious at herself for being so obvious and for not at least trying to be a little bit sneaky about it. She should take a leaf out of her sisters’ book.

“Jon, its for Jon,” she huffs, “I’m only being polite, it would be rude to turn up with something for the both of you and not him,” she gestures around the room at nothing in particular.

“Oh, quite,” Robb’s teasing lilt has only intensified, “and tell me, seeing as your so concerned with the welfare of our staff, are the other three-hundred lunches still in the foyer?”

She shakes her head at him as she laughs, because he is insufferable and lovable at the same time and really, this is all of his fault.

“Leave your sister alone, Robb. I think it’s nice,” her lovely papa chides.

“You’re right dad, it is nice. In fact,” he continues as a wolf-like grin stretches across his face, all teeth and destruction, “you should make sure your Sansa Stark hand-delivered lunch is in fact hand-delivered, and I just happen to know Jon is in his office right now…”

Her laughter ceases immediately.

“No, no, Robb,” she cringes, “I don’t want to be a nuisance and I really should go soon anyway, dad is so busy…”

“Nonsense, I’m sure he can spare a few minutes anyway,” Robb says casually.

“Well, you came all this way Sansa, so you might as well,” her father gestures to the door, and she swears his eyes are shining just like his sons.

She glares between them, failing to find a defender, huffs theatrically and grabs a baguette with as much aggression as she can, picks up a spare coffee cup with a dramatic, “fine,” and makes for the door.

“Two doors down from my office Sans, I’m sure you can find your way.”

Sansa doesn’t answer her brother as courtesy would dictate as she strides away to the sound of Robb laughing with her father, and now she knows for a fact that the pair of them are accomplices.

Sure, she will freely admit, to herself at least, that she wore one of her nicest skirts should she just happen to run into him. She had imagined a causal wave as she strutted across the office as his eyes tracked her across the room, not being awkwardly ensnared into her current trap by her own family, but she cannot lose face now.

As she walks towards the office two doors down from Robb’s, she can see the door is open, so she flicks her head about to try and add a little sway to her hair and stops herself at the doorframe.

Jon sits at his desk directly in front of her, swinging lazily in his chair whilst on the phone, his head tipped back, the knot at the back of his head resting against the top of his hair. He continues, swinging side to side as he talks to the person on the other end of the phone. She takes his distraction as a chance to appraise him, jacket discarded, eyes closed in concentration, shirt sleeves rolled up, but carefully so, exposing his forearms, strong and imposing.

She likes how his body screams comfort, casualness, like how he would be at home, but his voice is commanding and sure as he continues to give instructions about regulations and measurements and all kinds of things she isn’t paying attention to.

He looks good. So, so good and she’s thanking her lucky stars for her little skirt.

She suddenly doesn’t feel so shy anymore.

She coughs lightly to get his attention, which is quickly won as he snaps his eyes open and straightens a little in his seat. He grins at her and cocks his head to the side in silent question. Her appearance in his doorway is understandably unexpected, so she raises her offerings in each hand as his eyes travel between the coffee and sandwich.

He closes his eyes and nods his head enthusiastically, she can half imagine the groan that should accompany such jubilation if he wasn’t on the phone with someone incredibly important and if he wasn’t the constant professional.

She smiles at him and makes her way into the office properly; he’s watching her approach and gestures wordlessly to one of the chairs in front of his desk, but she ignores him and makes her way around it instead.

She gently places his lunch on the desk in front of him and sits rather shamelessly on its edge, crossing her heeled boots at the ankles. He’s swivelled his chair in her direction and it is sitting back in it casually again as he furrows his brows at what she is doing.

She offers him one of her little smiles, the type she has been told could get her anything she wanted in the past, and leans across him to grab a post-it note and pen, leaning to her side to quickly jot on it and placing it down in front of him. As she looks back at him, she cannot miss the way his eyes are fixed firmly on her legs.

They are close, very close. She bites her lip as he turns his attention to the desk, all the while continuing to talk about studies and precedence and materials as if he is completely unaffected. She knows that’s a lie.

He rests his arm on the edge of the desk, so near her thigh that she can feel the heat coming off him as he fingers her the post-it note and reads her message.

_Cannot stay, enjoy your lunch x_

She drops her hand gently onto his forearm, and lets her fingers skirt up it slowly, very slowly as their eyes meet. She feels his forearm flexing under her touch and wonders if he’s clenching his fist. He’s so very warm.

She’s playing with fire.

She smiles again, a smile that is meant to be sweet but most definitely is not and she stands without a word and walks slowly towards the door. She doesn’t look back, it’s a challenge, but she just about manages it.

She’s playing with fire, and maybe, maybe, she is just about ready to get her fingers burnt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise we are getting somewhere, I seriously promise! 
> 
> Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are well x


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon makes a decision...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I only updated this yesterday but I kind of feel we NEED the good things right now, and writing this certainly makes me feel good, so I hope you enjoy reading it to. 
> 
> This chapter is a gift and a curse in equal measure, may you bless me and forgive me in turn. 
> 
> There is some dancing in this chapter, I have added a you-tube link to the piece that inspired me/I envisioned at the start of the chapter because I am still not clever enough to know how to link things/pictures in here (poor me).

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6LiYDWYbJY>

\- Inspiration for Sansa's dance (which is later in the chapter)

*

Even the most wonderful day with Lya hasn’t been able to distract him from thoughts he shouldn’t be having. He loves Saturdays with Lya, always has, with lazy mornings in bed, breakfast which is more like lunch, sitting at the island in the kitchen in their pyjamas that he forces himself to wear, he’s not too insecure in his masculinity to admit he purposefully buys them matching pyjamas for this reason alone. Yet, come afternoon, he’s run out of ways to distract his thoughts from wandering and he feels inexplicably guilty that this time with his daughter is littered with lingering thoughts of Sansa.

It’s been little over a day this she steam rolled him into arousal and confusion and endearment at her sensual and sweet visit to his office, with lunch, he might add, lunch that she had purposefully brought for him. He can’t deny that it does something to his chest, that she had thought about him when they weren’t together, like he thinks about her. He also cannot deny that he has thought about her stretched across his desk in that skirt of hers on more than one occasion. She’s essentially ruined his office for him now.

Its been a little over two days since they sat in a quiet corner of a pub, nestled together like bodies in a bed on a Sunday morning, with coffee and secrets, yet instead it was with whiskey and words unspoken between them.

Maybe they had both denied this little thing, what ever it was, that sat between them, harbouring more, more, more, between their ribs. Its something, the unnamed thing, but its something all the same. They’ve been skirting around it for too long, and by skirting, he refers to her actual skirts, either real-life or ballet related which are equal in their ability to torture him.

It seems that both of them are kind of sick of pretending this isn’t real.

But it has just continued to bubble lightly under the surface, making home deeper under another rib, closer, lower, and he is just about ready to lose it.

He can’t even remember what the half cobbled together excuses where about why this would be a bad idea in the first place. Did it matter? Not likely, not if those very reason don’t even come to mind anymore.

Lya’s run him ragged all day, gods bless her, and he wanted her too. He’d tasked her with all sorts of odd activities that have only served to make her more excited as time has gone on, his little firecracker, _his hummingbird_. He’s so exhausted that he can’t help but thank whatever deity there is out there that the Saturday sleepover that Lya has started having with little Ned at Arya and Gendry’s has become a weekly thing. At least now he can sit at home in his own turmoil whilst he continues to pine over Sansa Stark.

He doesn’t even remember having it this bad for Ygritte, all those adolescent years ago.

He’s just about managed to shower and throw on some jeans and a black jumper, hair wild and damp around his face come late afternoon, all the while Lya has been dancing on her bed instead of packing her bag for the night. He takes the reigns, cobbling together some semblance of adequate belongings so that he least appears to be a sub-par parent. He feels exhausted and charged all at the same time.

“Baby, come on, off the bed, we’re going to be late,” he calls from downstairs, as he packs the popcorn and chocolate bags Lya begged him for. He is only half hopeful Arya wont murder him for it like she did last time the girls spent two hours coming down from a sugar high in which Gendry had been enforced to watch their ballet routine sixteen times over.

She would normally charge downstairs in excitement at the announcement they were leaving, but she appears by his side without a word, wrapping a little arm around his leg, and this is another reason he’s kept her so occupied today. She had a nightmare last night, she hasn’t had one in weeks, most likely months, not since things have settled down since they moved to Wintertown, with school and ballet and her friends, but one was bound to pop up unannounced and he knows its thrown her. He woke up with her warm and shaken in his bed, which hasn’t happened in longer than he can remember, and she couldn’t even recall what it was about, but he whispered words of reassurance and story after story of tales she likes, fables and fairies and friends in the dark, softly spoken into her curls until she drifted off again, safe and loved in his arms.

“You ok, baby?”

“Yes, daddy,” she nods with one of those close-lipped little smiles that make him feel it isn’t all that convincing.

“Tell me, sweetheart,” he prompts, lifting her from around his legs and popping her onto the island in the middle of the kitchen, so she is closer to him.

“I’m scared,” she whispers, looking down at her palms, her brown curls are an unruly as his, but they tinge with a little of Ygritte’s red in certain lights.

“About your sleepover?”

“Not the sleepover, I love our sleepovers, we have our secret meetings there,” she whispers again, and he has no idea what little club her and little Ned have concocted but he knows it involves metal crowns that poor Gendry has had to make for them. Apparently, there are membership rules and everything. He can’t help but grin at the image, “just going to sleep,” she continues.

“That’s ok Lya, you know it’s ok to be scared. Being scared makes you brave.”

“Really?” She asks shyly, but he is already nodding his head enthusiastically.

“Of course, and you know, if you don’t want to go, that’s fine, no one will mind, but if you want to try and be a little bit brave, that’s ok too…”

She frowns at him as she mulls over his words, taking it in slowly, and she looks so much like him when she thinks deeply like this, she gets it from him too, taking her time to dissect the facts instead of reacting like Ygritte would, his calm and steady little girl. He lets her take her time, he doesn’t interrupt of prompt her, but he can see her processing it all in that glorious curl-topped head of hers.

“Do you get scared too Daddy?”

Her question startles him, because he wasn’t expecting it.

“Always,” he answers truthfully.

Lya nods sagely.

“Have you been scared today too?”

He smiles and looks down at his daughter, who is far too clever for her own good, he bops his finger on her nose before answering.

“You know what, sweetheart… I think I have.”

She smiles at that, because aren’t they the pair.

“What about?” Lya asks.

Everything, he wants to tell her, for feeling guilty, for not being around enough, for working too much, for wanting too much for her, the type of things he never had, for feeling lonely, for wanting Sansa Stark so much that he thinks he can’t see straight for it, and for being too afraid to do anything about it.

But he cannot say any of that.

“All sorts of things,” he says instead.

“Have you been brave about them too then?” Lya asks, looking up at him with grey eyes as wide as the moon, like he holds all the answers to the worlds every question.

“Do you know what Lya, I don’t think I have, but if you’re brave, maybe I can be brave too,” he smiles down at her.

Maybe that’s the crux of it. If Lya Snow can go to her friend’s house for the night when she’s scared about having another nightmare, perhaps he can do something about the things whirling around his mind. Maybe he can’t do anything about his worries as a parent, that’s pretty much going to be there forever, but maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t need to be lonely anymore. Maybe, just maybe he can do something about his feelings for Sansa Stark. Perhaps he can give her a choice, one of them needs to, they cannot ignore the embers threatening to burst into flame any longer.

Dinner, he can be brave enough to ask her to dinner at least.

*

He drops Lya of with little preamble in the end. He had anticipated stress and maybe an errant tear, but as soon as they pulled up at Arya and Gendry’s house, she bounded inside without so much as a backward glance, her worries long forgotten. He felt so much lighter for it, at watching her run away.

He made sure Arya knew about the nightmare, she had nodded along sympathetically with understanding and assurances that she would call him if she needed to. He then made a mad dash back to the car once she became aware that Lya and little Ned were already tearing into their chocolate and popcorn bags in the sitting room, with Arya reigning down expletives and threats of violence behind him.

It was 7pm as he made his way through Wintertown. He stopped at the supermarket and grabbed some beers before starting the journey back across town to where his house lay in the quiet outskirts.

He’s not sure what possessed him, he’d planned on doing this smoother, less of an impulse, but as he drove passed Sansa’s studio and saw the lights on the first floor, with the hazy swirls of condensation dripping on the glass he decided to take a chance.

He’s not sure why she’s still here, her classes finished hours ago. He kind of likes that maybe she doesn’t have anything to do, just like him. His immediate worry that she might not be too keen on him showing up without an invitation isn’t strong enough to stop him from leaving his car and taking the stairs two at a time. The quicker he makes his way there the less chance he has to second guess himself.

The door to the main studio is open at the top of the stairs, and he can hear music drifting through, playing low and soft as he comes to a stop in the doorway to watch her, just as she had done in his office yesterday.

She’s dancing.

The songs different, new, modern, something he hasn’t heard before. She even looks different too, her hair unbound and flying around her with every turn, wearing just a leotard and her shoes, ribbons reaching like vines up her bare legs. He doesn’t think he’s seen her without her tights before, not that she needs them, her skin like porcelain dipped in milk-water.

This isn’t the classical, precise and poised Sansa he has seen in her videos, or on her posters from her days in the Royal Ballet. This is different. This is all her.

Her eyes are closed as she dances, turn after turn on her toes. He doesn’t know how she does it, lifting her legs as she spins without looking. Her back bends like water, her ribs rippling under her leotard as she breathes and pulls herself up again. It isn’t like her limbs are separate, it’s like her body is one thing, one Sansa.

She’s beautiful.

He’s never seen anything more beautiful, and he’s certain he never will.

Her eyes open gently, hooded and shining as their gaze’s lock in the mirror that stretches the entire length of the studio. He doesn’t have the chance to say anything, or to at least feel bad for not announcing himself, but he felt rooted to the spot and was loathe to interrupt something so lovely, but she just gives him one of her light, secretive little smiles and continues to dance. She meets his gaze again and again as she moves around the room when the steps allow.

He is certain all the things she is doing with her body have names, special terms in a pretty language that mean something to ballerina’s like her, but he doesn’t care, all that he knows is that he’s never been gladder for his spontaneity, for turning up and finding her like this on a dreary Northern evening.

She comes to a stop across the room from him, facing his direction as the music quietly comes to an end. Even the way she stops dancing is gentle and fluid, like its not really the end at all, but he knows she’s finished by the way she allows her chest to rise and fall heavily. She hasn’t taken her eyes from his once.

Jon knows this is the point he should say something, just a greeting or question about her day, but it all seems pointless and anticlimactic after what she has just shown him, the glimpse of her he doubt just anyone gets to see, so he doesn’t say anything at all. He decides that words, in this very moment, are rather pointless.

So as he strides over to her, to where she remains unmoving on the other side of the room, he does the thing he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about since that night he first met her all those weeks ago at the Wolf’s Head.

One hand reaches round the back of her head, burying itself in her tousled auburn hair and the other splays at her waist, fingers nestled between the notches of her ribs as he pulls her close, flush against him as she lets out a little gasp in surprise at the motion.

They spend a few moments looking at one another, his nose grazing hers as he feels her breathe dance across his skin, and its her, its Sansa, that finally presses her lips to his.

Its slow and gentle, the way she kisses him tentatively at first as she runs her hands slowly up his arms before bringing them around his neck and into his lose hair. Every touch, from her hands to her lips is like he is a fragile a breakable thing and he just wants to kiss her all the more for it. He can feel her smile against his lips and as she sighs sweetly into his mouth and he tips her head back to deepen the kiss and fight to control himself all at once. The moment their tongues touch he feels her tighten her grip on his hair and moan softly into his mouth.

He knows for certain that he fucking loves kissing her.

She tastes like chamomile and something sweet. Its glorious, she’s glorious, and the subtle tangle of their tongues is no longer enough, and that’s when their tentative, soft and gentle kiss changes.

His battle for restraint means little to her as she pulls him backwards until she hits the mirrored wall behind them. It’s impossible to not want to push her harder against it. Jon skates his hands down the side of her breasts, coasting a ghosting path down her ribs and hips until he reaches the backs of her thighs, lifting her up as she wraps her legs around his waist without a word of encouragement as she nips at his lip before tracing it with her tongue.

“Fuck,” he sighs, dropping his head onto her shoulder.

They need to stop. He needs to stop.

She laughs breathlessly in his arms as she continues to card her fingers gently through his hair.

“I was only meant to ask you to dinner,” he mirrors her laugh, his voice husky and deep as she bites her lip and shakes her head at him.

“You can do that in a bit,” she whispers.

He puts her back down onto the floor with care as they continue to catch their breath, but he doesn’t let her go from his arms, pressed up against the mirror, as he reaches for her face and gently traces her bottom lip with his thumb.

“You’re so beautiful, you know that,” he tells her, and she somehow manages to blush even more, so much so that it makes his knees feel weak.

“Jon…” she starts but before she can continue, they both startle at the sound of the door downstairs banging closed.

“Expecting someone?” he raises his eyebrows and grins at her.

“No,” she shakes her head, “I wasn’t even expecting you,” she whispers shyly.

“I could watch you dance all day, Sansa,” he said again, grazing her cheek with his knuckle before pressing another kiss to her lips.

“Someone’s coming,” she whispers once more as he takes a small step back, so their bodies are no longer flush against one another. He misses the press of her against him, so he doesn’t step back too far, just far enough so it’s still decent.

“I hope I’m not interrupting…” the form in the doorway drawls, its distinctively a man’s voice, but he’s shadowed in the darkness of the hallway and Jon’s half desperate to tell the bloke that he most definitely _is_ interrupting, and he’d rather he fuck off, but there is something in the way that Sansa freezes in his arms that stops him, something about the hollow and closed off look in her usual sparking eyes that makes him pause.

He turns to look at the man who slowly makes his way into the room and Jon knows for certain he dislikes him, standing in suit that likely costs more than some people’s cars. He’s the type of man that oozes confidence. As Jon rakes his appearance over the man that he knows he’s seen him before too and that’s where is hits him. He’s seen him in Sansa’s video’s before, dancing with him, the Aemon to her Naerys, moving together like lovers, and Jon cannot get the image of the two of them out of his head until Sansa finally breaks the pulsing silence filling the room.

“Jaime,” she breathes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry... I guess?


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Jaime confront one another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Hearts,   
> Where have I been? Why have I been so naff at updating and responding to your beautiful and lovely comments?   
> Well, the truth is, I work for the NHS, the finest and loveliest institution on our green and pleasant lands... and its a tricky time for us.   
> I consider myself blessed, humbled, blown away by the support our health care system is receiving right now, and my priority is to my wonderful profession, but as always, fan-fiction has been a spark in an otherwise uncertain and worrisome time. I still consider myself very new to this lovely community but as always its a balm to find a few minutes to escape to every once and a while. So thank you for just existing.   
> I am trying to still find time to write here and there, but have moved into hospital accommodation so I can be closer to work and not have to travel into London, although I'm sure my family is enjoying the break from my incessant Rose-ness.   
> I hope I haven't lost anyone… 
> 
> Anyway, now that I've stopped blubbering, what about Jaime eh, lets see what the scallywag has to say.

Frankly, she cannot believe this. She really, truly, cannot fucking believe the turn of events she has experienced this evening, and yes, she absolutely thinks the profanity is justified.

Ten minutes ago, she was kissing Jon Snow. Kissing may be an understatement. The softest-sweetest-most-gentle-soon-turned-passionate-like-nothing-she-had-ever-experienced kissing may be a more apt description for what Jon had done to her, all with her legs wrapped around his waist and pressed up against the mirror, thank you very much

She really bloody hopes the outline and print of her body from where he had held her up against the glass like she weighed nothing can be seen by anyone else.

She’s not even wearing tights. The scandal!

That, however, was ten minutes ago. She’s certainly not kissing him now.

Now Jon stands between her and the man who broke her heart. The man who made it very apparent she was not worth a damn and she certainly wasn’t enough.

She wants to rage and cry and scream and run away all at the same time.

Sansa had never expected to see _him_ ever again. That had been the deal, and it hurts just as much as she ever imagined it would.

“Jaime,” she breathes.

She hasn’t seen Jaime Lannister in nearly a year and a half, but he hasn’t changed a jot. He still offers her the same feline-like and slow smile as he rakes a hand through his hair.

“Hello, Sansa,” he says easily, like he did every morning she woke up in his bed when she shouldn’t have.

“What are you doing here?” she says firmly, sounding oddly braver than she feels.

“I was in the area…”

“I’m sure,” she says sarcastically, and she appreciates Jon’s dry chuckle more than he can know.

“I thought it would be nice to catch up, Sansa, like old times,” Jaime continues unaffected.

She appraises him before her, Jon’s hand still on the small of her back and she can feel the gentle pressure of his touch, grounding her. She’s certain had he not been here she would be in tears right now, but now more than anything, she is half desperate to hear what it is the man who broke her heart has to say. He hasn’t come all the way from Kings Landing for no reason, to catch up? No. Jaime Lannister didn’t do anything just because.

“Fine. We can talk,” she says, even offering an eye-roll which is so unlike her, and she can see Jaime’s eyebrows skirt up in amusement. She turns her attention back to Jon, “I’m sorry Jon…”

“Don’t worry about it at all,” he says softly, genuinely, and she wonders where this perfect man had been all those years ago, when she had been young and alone in Kings Landing. He doesn’t even look put out, and who knows where this night could have headed if Jaime hadn’t turned up? She wants him to think about that too, to know this isn’t what it looks like, whatever that is, so she leans forward slowly, with a hand on his shoulder and places a slow kiss to the corner of his mouth.

Jon, perfect man that he may be, still puffs his chest out a little bit at her actions in typical male swagger, and she takes him by the hand and leads him over to the door, past Jaime, because she cannot bear the potential pissing contest should the two males come into close contact with one another, but she still feels them glare at one another as they pass.

“I’ll speak to you soon,” Jon whispers to her once more, and it sounds more like a promise than anything, so much so that she can only nod in reply. He looks off over her shoulder, taking in the man he is leaving her with for a few moments with a scowl on his face before turning towards the stairs and he is gone, just like that.

She takes a deep breath in, letting is leave her in a rush before turning and facing him. He still looks just as good as he always did, but it doesn’t make her melt now like it once did, the beautiful, older, talented man who made her putty in his hands for years. He is still as fair and golden, his eyes are still like clear cut emeralds, but her blood’s not simmering in her veins as it had in years passed.

That makes her feel stronger than she ever could have dreamed of when she sat on her bathroom floor in Kings Landing in tears when it had all gone wrong.

He’s looking at her softly now, a look that tells a her so much, or it once did, that she meant something to him, but it wasn’t enough then and it isn’t enough now.

“Sansa…”

“What are you doing here Jaime?” she interrupts him.

“I wanted to speak to you,” he says, “which would have been easier if you answered your damn phone, I’ve been calling you for weeks.”

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed,” she shrugged, she had of course, the numerous missed calls had littered her home screen for weeks.

“Of course not, you have no problem answering my father’s calls though apparently,” he crosses his arms across his broad chest. It gives her brief satisfaction that she has the ability to do something that irritates him.

“Your father was always rather lovely to me, and he likes to keep in touch.” Sansa doesn’t offer anything else, because all things considered, she is rather pleased her friendship with the intimidating and powerful Tywin Lannister has survived, so enamoured with her was he always, that she’s often thought of him as a bit of a pussycat.

“Yes, well, he did always like you more than me,” Jaime sighed, turning away from her and walking gracefully around the room.

This irked her, him walking around her studio, brushing his hand along the bar, uninvited, in the place she has built for herself, the place that has nothing to do with him.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” She barked out, just as harsh as she had intended.

“You seem much changed, little wolf,” he speaks distantly to the mirror.

“Don’t call me that!”

“Sansa,” he sighed, “can we just talk like adults please?”

 _Adults_. She could scream bloody murder at him.

“Oh, am I too young for you now Jaime? If I recall, you rather liked that I was so young once. That’s how you like your women, isn’t’ it? So, tell me Jaime, what shall we talk about?”

“Well…”

“Let me guess,” she interrupts, begging herself to keep her voice as cold and steady as she can, “shall we talk about how at the age of twenty-one, my once pas de deux partner became the Director of the Royal Ballet whilst we had a relationship behind closed doors, a relationship that I _begged_ to be public, again and again, but you insisted it must be secret, for years and years Jaime…”

“I did that for your protection, everyone would have said…”

“That I was in the position I was in the company because we were sleeping together? Don’t make me laugh Jaime, I was a prima ballerina long before the company even sniffed around you for a role behind the scenes once you retired. Don’t bloody insult my talent.”

“I was right though Sansa. The board of trustees were more than unhappy when our relationship came to light,” he implores whilst taking a step closer to her.

“They were,” she nods, and she can remember it like it was yesterday, being caught in her dressing room in the Royal Opera House, not five minutes after the curtain call for the Weirwood Queen, wrapped in once another, his hands in her skirts and her hair and everywhere, caught red handed by some blustering and middle aged board member, she can still vividly recall the way he looked at her, only at her, not at Jaime, the injustice of it all still lingers, “and what did you do about that Jaime? What was your solution? Do you remember?” she whispers.

“I remember…” he sighs.

“Me too. You told me that I should leave the company, that your position was too tenuous, that you had a responsibility to everyone there. You said it would be less upheaval if I were to leave, you said, and I quote, ‘no one will remember the ballerina that tried to seduce the director in a few months’… you said you couldn’t stop them from pushing me out the door, so it would be better if I left with some dignity.”

She had been just another woman who had taken the brunt of the punishment that should have been levelled at the two of them. But Jaime hadn’t lost his job, his place, his everything. It was a tale as old as time.

“And I was right,” he carries on, frowning at her with imploring eyes, eyes that begged her to see reason, “eighteen months later and no one even remembers it. All we needed to do was to wait a bit and now, now you can come back, it’s time for you to take your place again Sansa. I have a space for you, choreography, that sort of thing…”

“Ah. So, I am no longer expendable…”

“Sansa, don’t be so dramatic.”

“Dramatic? Jaime can you hear yourself? I was in love with you, and you asked me to throw away my career, my position, everything I had worked for to avoid you the scandal of having to deal with the situation like a grown man. If you had cared about me at all you would have fought for me. I would have moved mountains for us to be together, but you didn’t, you couldn’t, and I understand that now. I loved you Jaime, honestly, I did, but I don’t need you anymore, I don’t need the life you thought you gave me, when really you gave me nothing. I deserve more that to be your dirty little secret…”

“What do you deserve then Sansa? This,” he argues, gesturing around himself in a bored fashion, “this little school, that boy who you were so clearly wrapped in earlier? You are better than this.”

“This little school, as you call it, is mine, I worked for it, and I love it, and Jon is none of your bloody business. Would he fight for me? Its too early to say, but I imagine he would Jaime. More importantly, everything that happened between us has taught me how to fight for myself.”

“You can’t be happy here Sansa, in this bleak place. Think of our life in Kings Landing, the Royal Ballet, everything…”

“What life Jaime?” she laughed softly, “we snuck around, we never went anywhere, not for years. Unless I was in your bed you weren’t interested. I didn’t see it at the time, and I no longer blame you, I’ve grown more now, and I see what I deserve, and it wasn’t that… and Jaime, I am happy here, happier than I ever have been.”

Despite his blustering and his arguing, it is still a bit of a shock to see Jaime Lannister shrink before her eyes. He always had the uncanny ability to wrap her around his little finger, but times have changed. She still isn’t even really sure why he is here, for a job offer? Because he wants her back? In all honestly, the once broken-hearted girl doesn’t care anymore, she doesn’t even want to know.

“I love you,” he whispers simply, his voice husky and cracking. She can see his hands twitch at his sides, hands she once adored and practically worshipped, like they are desperate to reach for her, but she only wraps her hands around herself tighter.

“Oh Jaime,” she sighs, “you don’t love me, not really. Maybe you did once, or you loved the idea of me, young, talented, innocent…”

“Exquisite,” he said softly, tipping his head to the side and smiling gently down at her.

He likes to call her that once, his exquisite little wolf.

She once made herself believe that Jaime knew her than anyone, but the truth is he didn’t, except for maybe her body. They danced together like the well-practiced lovers they soon became long before he ever touched her intimately. As a principle danseur he had been the first person she ever partnered with as a prima ballerina, the Aemon to her Naerys. He knew her every line and inhale of breath, which is well and good, and they were beautiful together, an immaculate partnership on the outside that hid so many blemishes underneath.

“That’s the problem with people thinking someone is flawless, they will always try and seek out imperfections,” she said, to herself more than anything, “you didn’t want me then Jaime, and I wasn’t strong enough to try and dissuade your inaction. We both made our beds…”

Now they needed to lie in them, and Sansa would happily lie in hers, be it alone, or maybe one day with Jon if she counted her lucky stars enough. She knew for certain it wouldn’t be with Jaime Lannister, not now, not ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I'm a fool for Jonsa, but Jaimsa? Damn there are some good Jaimsa fics out there. Plus, older guys, hello!   
> 2\. Yes, it was Tywin who was being all sweet and lovely to Sansa on the phone all those chapters ago. I'm kind of a sucker for AU's where Tywin is a good guy. Anyone else?  
> 3\. Will Jon and Sansa be able to pick up where things left off? 
> 
> Anywho, stay well, be safe, support and protect our national health service or the infrastructure in whatever country you call home by staying in with your loved ones etc. My campaign for Prime Minister/debut rap album will be announced soon.   
> *puts soap box away*
> 
> Rose x

**Author's Note:**

> I will be posting the first three chapters tonight, enjoy!


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